Water Safety

Updated Medical Device Processing Requirements  The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) introduced a new standard, ANSI/AAMI ST108:2023, establishing requirements for the quality of water used to process medical […]

Boilers are a necessary part of many establishments and can be found anywhere hot water or steam is required. Most facilities, from the ones that produce food to hospitals, require uninterrupted use of boilers everyday.
Proper treatment is important for maintaining maximum steam production and avoiding unnecessary offline time. It is well known that boiler water creates deposits on the interior surface of the machine. Deposits may vary from scale due to concentrated minerals to those created by corrosion products.This leads to problems ranging from loss of efficiency to condemning a boiler, especially in the low to medium pressure boilers.

With the global pandemic and variants of viruses being spread via aerosolized and aspirated droplets, water safety is more critical now than at any other time in our global history. Waterborne pathogens found in water systems include building sprinklers, water features, fountains, and delivery pipes. Anywhere water is stored, left to sit, or is used intermittently, or held in pipes is subject to the creation of biofilms. These hard-to-remove biofilms allow the bacteria to grow and multiply in a protected shell until eventually released and is aerosolized through various point-of-use devices.

The efficiency of cooling towers is always a topic of discussion and worth a deeper dive. Even a well-controlled scale or corrosion inhibitor program can be significantly affected by the presence of flourishing microorganisms. Because the interior of a cooling tower is usually moist and warm, it provides an ideal condition for microorganisms to flourish and they subsequently migrate throughout the entire cooling system.

Legionnaires disease is a respiratory infection “resulting from aspiration of clumps of Legionella biofilms detached from air and water [HVAC] systems.” Its name stems from a three-day convention of the American Legion held at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia in July 1976. More than 2,000 attended the annual event. Within a few days after it ended, attendees and others who were at the hotel began showing up in hospital emergency rooms with mysterious respiratory symptoms – just over 200 in all. Despite doctors’ efforts, more than 34 people lost their lives to the illness.