European Working Group for Legionella Infections

Although the Dutch ministry of VROM (Health and Environment) has its own, strict rules for Legionella control, in Europe the EWGLI sets out guidelines and rules for dealing with and preventing Legionella infections. The guidelines are available here.

Procedures for the risk assessment, environmental investigation and control and prevention of legionella in water systems

This section summarises the factors to be considered in the risk assessment which include:

• the responsibilities of the individuals concerned, measurement of competence, their training requirements;
• management structure; the factors promoting the growth of legionella bacteria; the types of water systems to be considered and the documentation of the risk assessment;
• the systems for implementing and monitoring the control scheme. It details the items that should be included in the written scheme for the control of the risk and the need for regular review of the control measures, including the role of microbiological sampling. 

Technical guidelines for the control and prevention of legionella in water systems

This provides the technical background to the control measures commonly applied to hot and cold water systems and cooling systems, including:

• features of the design and construction;
• management of the systems during commissioning and re-commissioning and normal operation;
• it emphasises the use of temperature control for hot and cold water systems along with good maintenance with regular disinfection and cleaning;
• it also provides information on the use of alternatives such as chlorine, chlorine dioxide and copper/silver ionisation.

As our customers have found in practice, temperature control, maintenance and cleaning has only limited effectiveness. In buildings with old plumbing, with dead-ends in the system, or a lack of use of parts of the facility, Legionella bacteria are bound to return. The improvements to the plumbing and the building are costly or impossible to perform. Frequent flushing with cold or hot water is required. This has disadvantages:

• flushing is hard to organise and takes lots of time and effort;
• flushing wastes water;
• plumbing improvements are expensive and seldom lead to a complete eradication of all potential sources of bacteria;
• thermal control of the water (i.e. keeping it at high temperature to prevent growth of Legionella) costs lots of energy, is expensive and is environmentally unsound;
• as these methods do not provide guaranteed elimination of Legionella, frequent samples need to be taken and analysed, yet another high cost.

As these steps do not eliminate Legionella, frequently clients resort to alternative methods, such as:

• micro-ultra filtration;
• UV-light;
• pasteurisation.

Again, in practice these methods fail to deliver. All of these techniques have shortcomings, and a short interruption in functioning may cause yet another Legionnella outbreak. As a result these expensive installations require careful monitoring, control, and sampling for bacteria.

Only copper- silver ionisation such as supplied by BIFIPRO®, works. BIFIPRO® adds minute quantities of copper and silver ions to the water using electrodes. These ions eliminate the biofilm present in water instalaltions. As the biofilm is essential for the Legionella bacteria to survive, it will be eradicated. Only weeks after the installation of a BIFIPRO® system Legionella bacteria will disappear and Legionella contamination will be history.