Key Takeaways:
Legionnaires’ disease is back.
In reality, it never went away. The potentially deadly airborne disease has made headlines numerous times since 1976, when it was first identified as the culprit in the deaths of 34 people who had attended an American Legion convention at a Philadelphia hotel. Another 180 were sickened in the outbreak.
Since then, facility managers in all types of institutional and commercial facilities have implemented monitoring and maintenance measures to prevent outbreaks of the disease. Nonetheless, it continues to surface in facilities nationwide.
In April, an outbreak was reported at the Wynn Las Vegas luxury hotel, according to the Daily Mail, where two hotel guests tested positive. The city’s health district took samples from the hotel, and multiple samples tested positive for Legionella. More recent samples taken from the site indicate no detectable levels of the bacteria, according to the department.
Then in July, New York City’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum was listed among numerous Manhattan buildings that tested positive for Legionella, according to The Guardian. The distinctive, cylindrical-shaped art museum was among 19 facilities that have completed remediation, according to the New York City Health Department.
The Guggenheim is one of 31 buildings identified as having cooling towers with Legionella bacteria during an initial screening test as part of the ongoing investigation into an Upper East Side Legionnaires’ disease community cluster. Each building has been ordered to clean and disinfect its cooling towers immediately out of an abundance of caution.
As the city dealt with the outbreak, the Mamdani administration adopted new tactics to try to stamp out clusters of the bacterial illness more quickly, according to The New York Times. The outbreak has killed five people and sickened another 82.
The city’s measures would publicly identify buildings suspected as sources of Legionnaires’ disease and require building owners to swiftly clean cooling towers. To hasten identification of potential sources of the bacteria, the city said it would begin publicly disclosing the addresses of buildings with cooling towers that test positive for Legionella bacteria during an initial screening. Releasing the addresses could lead passers-by to avoid certain blocks or put more pressure on building owners to keep their cooling towers Legionella-free.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
