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ENVIRONMENTAL HYGIENE

CONTROL OF LEGIONELOSIS.

 The law 865/2003, of July 4 established the hygienic sanitary criteria for the prevention and control of the Legionelosis. It tries to avoid the conditions that favours the settling and expansion of the Legionella, such as critical temperatures for their expansion, stagnation of water and the accumulation of substrata. The law also proposes the adoption of prevention measures in facilities and buildings not associated before with cases of legionelosis and is based on the application of two fundamental concepts;

1. Elimination of dirty areas by proper design and maintenance of the facilities.

2. Control of the water temperature and continuous disinfection to avoid the conditions that favours the survival and expansion of micro-organisms.

The preventive measures are applied both in the design and maintenance phase for all equipments and buildings.

In the design phase of the sanitary water network we take actions to ensure total water tightness, isolation and the correct flow of the water, avoiding specially stagnation.

The water temperature in the cold water circuits should be lower than 20ºC, and in the warm water circuit should not be lower than 50ºC at the most removed point of the circuit or in the return pipeline to the accumulator. Also, the installation should be capable of raising water temperature to 70ºC.

The equipments should be ready accessible for cleaning, disinfection and sample taking operations. Also, the materials employed should be capable of disinfection.

The refrigeration towers and condensers, should be located so as to minimise the exposure of aerosols to persons. They should be located in places far away from the persons, air conditioning intakes and windows. The materials will have to resist the aggressiveness action of disinfectants avoiding corrosion. Finally, they should be designed so that they are easily accessible for inspection, cleanliness, disinfection and sample taking.