Legionella alert at sport centre (From Oxford Mail)

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Legionella alert at sport centre

8:38pm Friday 30th March 2007

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Traces of a bacteria which can lead to a potentially fatal disease have forced the closure of a sports centre.

The Kidlington and Gosford Sports Centre closed at 4pm after samples taken from the hot water taps showed traces of the Legionella bacteria - which can lead to Legionnaires' disease.

Cherwell District Council has said the level of risk to members of the public is low but chose to close the sports centre, on Oxford Road, Kidlington, as a precaution.

Norman Bolster, the council's Portfolio Holder for Recreation said: "The advice that the council has received from our specialist environmental company is that the risks of infection from the circumstances at Kidlington and Gosford Sports Centre are very low indeed.

"The samples are from the hot water supply system and not from systems that mean water droplets are in a vapour state as they have been in some high profile cases elsewhere.

"This is nothing to do with air conditioning systems. Despite this very low level of risk, we have taken this precautionary action."

More samples from the sports centre have been taken and will be tested at a laboratory this weekend.

The water system and pipes will now be disinfected.

Cherwell District Council carries out tests at sports centres every six months.

Staff have been informed of the test results and the sports centre will be closed until further notice.

The Legionella bacteria was also discovered earlier this month at Peers School pool in Littlemore and at Bullingdon Prison near Bicester.

The are up to 250 reports of Legionnaires' disease in the UK every year.

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N.AUST, Kidlington says...
9:30pm Fri 30 Mar 07

How long will it take to resolve the situation and get back to normal.

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steve, glasgow says...
9:12am Sat 31 Mar 07

if the council followed L8 ACOP in the first place eg monthly temp checks quarterly showerheads disinfection, six months tanks and why are they testing taps for legionella in the first place. is this going to be another barrow council

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Patrick, London says...
7:59pm Tue 10 Apr 07

As Steve from Glasgow says, if they were following the HSEs ACoP L8, which says in detail what precautions are needed, why were they testing taps biologically ? L8 suggests that from a hot water system (unlike a cooling tower) you only take legionella samples if the system is dangerously unpredictable or out of control. So either they knew the system was dangerously out of control, or they are not following L8.

So perhaps the question that needs o be asked is just that, were they disregarding the detailed guidance? Then, if they ignored it in this respect, was it being ignored completely, or as in Barrow had the relevant building manager never even heard of it ? Has a proper L8 based risk assessment ever been done, if so was it before this spurious test or afterwards ?

Or did they have a system that they knew was out of control by doing the temperature measurements that they should have been doing, and that was why they were sampling for legionella.

Or is this a case of badly managed sub contractors (who probably also do not know what L8 says in sufficient detail) taking advantage of the ignorance of the building operators to do expensive and profitable tests that do not give reliable safety information, instead of the cheap and simple tests in accordance with a competently prepared, detailed, risk assessment (as specifically required by law) that would have provided real long term safety ?

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