Water Management Archives - Harper Water

Water Management

Multi-Drug Resistant Microorganisms In Your Drains

Evidence linking the role of water services – both potable influent and waste waters – in the transmission of waterborne pathogens such as Legionella pneumophila, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Non-tuberculous Mycobacteria and their resulting infections has increased significantly in recent years.  The reported in-premise multi-drug resistant waterborne infections such as from Pseudomonas aeruginosa, P. putida, Klebsiella pneumoniae, …

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Is Bottled Drinking Water Quality Suitable for Patient Consumption?

The provision of bottled water for patient consumption and assessment of the microbial risk remains a blind spot for infection prevention teams and water safety groups.  Few consider that bottled water could be a source of Pseudomonas aeruginosa or other waterborne pathogens. There are times when bottled water could be safer and a logistically favourable …

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Thermostatic Mixing Valves & Water Hygiene

Authors: David Harper & Dr. Catherine Whapham Contamination of Thermostatic Mixer Valve (TMV) Taps In August 2022, Meda & Gentry from Frimley Park Hospital, published a letter in the Journal of Hospital Infection containing positive evidence of good water hygiene practice in action.  In 2018, following the persistent presence (despite remediation, cleaning, disinfection, retesting) of …

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Fungal Spores in Drinking Water – Aspergillus, Fusarium, Candida, Cryptococcus and others

The College of Environmental Science and Engineering at Tongii University, Shanghai (Zhao et al, 2022) have completed an important review and analysis of published literature on the presence of fungi in drinking water (Aspergillus, Fusarium, Candida, Cryptococcus andothers). The paucity of easy and reliable analysis methods, lack of regulation and limited control strategies has led …

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Non-Tuberculous Mycobacteria – a 21st Century Waterborne Pathogen

Non-Tuberculous Mycobacteria (NTM) are microorganisms which can be found everywhere in our environment, not just in water but in soil, vegetation, aerosols and dust particles.  There are over 170 NTM species identified, although not all are clinically relevant, and this number is still increasing.  The widespread introduction of disinfectants within drinking water treatment processes and …

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Catching Killers

New Learning About Legionella With two new Legionella species discovered within the last 12 months it is clear that we continue to learn about this waterborne bacterium.  Two recently published papers, including a multinational study from the innovative and hardworking ESCMID Study Group for Legionella Infections (ESGLI) (Ricci et al., 2022) reveal further important facts. …

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Construction Concerns?

How well do we really understand the multiple factorial parameters that can influence Legionella, Pseudomonas, non-tuberculous mycobacteria, Stenotrophomonas and other waterborne pathogen survival and growth within our in-premise drinking water systems?  Certainly the design of a system and the different materials in the fluid pathway can have an impact, as can the chemical composition of …

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Protecting High Risk Patients from Waterborne Infection

Patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation (BMT) are profoundly immunosuppressed.  Their susceptibility to even very low concentrations of environmental microorganisms including waterborne bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Legionella spp., non-tuberculous mycobacteria, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia), which would normally offer no threat to healthy or more mildly compromised individuals, becomes critical to manage.  Mucosal surfaces, our semipermeable skin barrier …

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Pseudomonas aeruginosa – Hiding in Plain Sight

The team from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, have recently published on the functionality of Pseudomonas aeruginosa following exposure to chlorine and UV light disinfection (Chiang et al., 2022) Their report highlights the major limitations in using cell culture methodology to assess waterborne bacteria pathogenic activity, to validate and/or …

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Risks at The Water’s Edge

Until recently it was a rarity to read about Cupriavidus pauculus – an occasional case study perhaps – it was certainly not a waterborne pathogen at the centre of outbreak investigations like Legionella pneumophila, Pseudomonas aeruginosa or non-tuberculous Mycobacteria. However, in 2018 the sad events unfolded from the new build Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow, …

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