How To Go About Performing A Legionella Risk Assessment

A Legionella risk assessment is something that usually has to be provided if your place of business has five or more employees although this differs from location to location so it is important to check the local statutes in order to pass all the ordinances. A Legionella risk assessment sometimes coincides or is an amendment to your health and safety risk assessment so you might want to check before starting a whole risk assessment dedicated to Legionella. We must look at Legionella and its rarity yet severity to understand why a Legionella risk assessment is needed.

Why A Legionella Risk Assessment Is Needed

Today there is 50 known species of Legionella that we know exist and these species can survive in a majority of civilized locations around the world. Named from the outbreak at an American Legion convention the deadly bacteria infected 221 individuals and had caused the deaths of 34. This goes to show you the severity of the deadly bacteria and how it can take the lives of many who are infected and because of this and the Legionella ability to go unnoticed in many public water systems is reason why many state and federal regulators require that businesses do a proper Legionella risk assessment. Legionella can be produced in many various types of water systems and water treatment systems. Such facilities that use large cooling towers, commercial air conditioning units and domestic hot water heaters have been known to contain and incubate Legionella bacteria. Heated pools have also been seen and are now widely tested for Legionella bacteria.

Testing For Your Legionella Risk Assessment

Since a Legionella risk assessment is now asked for by most buildings that employ five or more individuals we must look at the process that your business must go through in order to pass the Legionella risk assessment process. The Legionella risk assessment should be done if asked for in the same fashion as a normal health and safety environment risk assessment is done. This will take the assistance of a third party that is qualified to give a Legionella risk assessment testing of the water in your building. The third party water testing consultant will go through and test water from any possible places that would pose as a risk or potential location for Legionella to start a growth. They will go through and locate all places where you can prevent the growth of Legionella and they will inform you of what preventative measures you can take in order to alleviate future problems with the growth of Legionella. If the prevention of Legionella is to where you cannot maintain a completely controlled environment then the Legionella tester will help you to use preventative techniques in order to alleviate future problems and to keep the area contained from employees or customers or anyone from potentially getting infected by the Legionella. If you would like to learn more about a Legionella risk assessment than write to us in the comment section below.