Cooling Tower, Hot Topic

摘要

Feels like it's been a pretty good while since legionello-sis found its way into the national headlines for any length of time. When a dozen people lose their lives in the most famous city in the United States, though, the culprit is going to persist past the usual 24-hour news cycle. By now, you've certainly heard about the outbreak in New York. Elsewhere, a major pharmaceutical manufacturer had to shut down operations at a factory temporarily when the bacteria became an issue in one of its two cooling towers. Even more recently, it turned up in the HVAC system in a large government building in Quebec. The respective organizations took care with the system and followed with re-testing as you would expect. And in light of the events in Manhattan, I'm sure facilities across the continent are ready to operate with an excess of caution (in the Canadian case, the level found was still substantially below local thresholds, but legionella had been identified in three separate months earlier this year in the province's public buildings).