Legionella ? discovered in 1976 when it sickened attendees of an American Legion conference ? is alive and flourishing, often in hospital water pipes.
Federal guidelines call for testing and disinfection procedures only after hospital-acquired cases crop up, said Janet Stout, microbiologist with the University of Pittsburgh. “However, the mortality rate is so high, that?s after people have died.”
The bacteria can build a film on the inside of water pipes that protects it from the most common means of antibacterial purification: heat and chlorine shock treatments and copper/silver ionization, said Dr. Joseph Cervia, professor of medicine and pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and vice president of Pall Medical.
Pall sells a filtration device to eliminate Legionella and other bacteria at the tap and hosted a seminar on water-borne diseases Wednesday in Baltimore.
Shock treatments are effective at controlling the bacteria, Stout said, but only when repeated every few months. Their protective film preserves the heart of the colony, and some forms survive inside amoebae, which form a protective cyst in adverse conditions.
Ionization is about 94 percent effective, but the bacteria may develop resistance, Stout said. Chlorine dioxide treatment is more effective, but it can take up to two years to completely eradicate Legionella colonies.
Filtering at the tap in critical-care units immediately and completely stops the bacteria, which is too big for 2-micron filters, Cervia said.
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