Growing Bacteria Under Cleanroom Conditions

Hygiene is the top priority when testing drinking water for Legionnaire?s disease. For German hospitals, nursing homes and homes for the elderly, swimming baths and other public institutions, regular tests by certified laboratories of drinking water for Legionnaire?s disease are prescribed. A part of the water samples taken in the Nuremberg conurbation arrive at the team led by Peter Daum in the Municipal Water Treatment and Environmental Analysis Laboratory Nuremberg, Germany.

INCREASED MEASURES AGAINST LEGIONNAIRE‘S DISEASE

In 1999 the Environmental Analysis Laboratory Nuremberg put into operation the first Memmert CO2 incubator for growing legionellae. Almost 10 years later it is being joined by the latest INCO2 generation of appliances – and with good reason. With the increased awareness of the danger of these bacteria in warmed up water, with which humans come into contact through drinking, bathing, showering or for medical applications, the number of samples taken and tested has also increased. Coming into contact with the bacteria is not in itself dangerous; it is rather the breathing in of droplets of water, or aerosols, containing the bacteria, into the lungs that can lead to the life-threatening Legionnaire‘s disease. Legionellae prefer water temperatures between 25°C and 45°C and prosper in quiet places where there is no movement and turbulence. Numerous types can be found everywhere in natural lakes and rivers and get into the drinking water supply through ground water, but it is only our rising standard of living that has turned Legionella pneumophila in particular, which is responsible for an estimated 90% of all cases of Legionnaire`s disease, into a worldwide hazard. Because where hygiene standards are poor, or where there are structural flaws in technical systems for the supply of warm water, it can find ideal conditions to propagate. Legionnaire‘s disease, a form of pneumonia, is therefore a genuine disease of affluence, the name of which goes back to an epidemic in 1976 in which 182 former American soldiers were taken ill, of whom 29 died.