A good cooling water tower treatment is the key way to protect your premises from harmful microbes, such as the legionella bacteria. Why do you need to treat your cooling water tower? What are the choices for treatment and how effective are these treatments? Read on for a quick guide to cooling tower water treatments and their effectiveness.
What is Legionella?
The Legionella bacteria can result in one of a number of serious conditions in humans, collectively termed Legionellosis. These include legionnaire’s disease, and pontiac fever. The most serious of these, legionnaire’s disease, is a form of pneumonia and is potentially fatal. Legionella is a waterborne bacterium that lives in many areas of water including rivers and lakes. In large, naturally occurring bodies of water the bacteria tends to live in small numbers. However, in manmade systems for water such as cooling water towers and general plumbing, it can spread quickly if the conditions are right.
Legionella in the Workplace
A cooling water tower is one the most common places that legionella bacteria is found in the workplace, thanks to the fact that it’s part of an open water system. This means that it’s important to choose an effective water treatment system if you have a cooling water tower at your premises. Other sources of legionella can be found in spa pools or in dry or wet cooling systems.
If you have this type of system in your premises, you must do a risk assessment in order to decide how you are going to prevent growth of the bacteria. If either a member of your workforce, or the general public, contracts Legionellosis, it can lead to criminal proceedings and huge damages against your company.
Effectiveness of a Cooling Tower Water Treatment
The good news is that there’s a choice of effective cooling water tower treatments available. One treatment option is a chemical one and one is a non-chemical one. The non-chemical Wallenius Advanced Oxidation Technology (AOT) treatment isn’t just effective for the water, it’s also cost-effective financially. The lack of chemicals also makes this a safer, greener option. The Wallenius AOT is proven to kill 99.9999% of not only legionella bacteria but also pseudomonas bacterium. The system uses light to produce free radicals which break down the harmful micro-organism that may live in your cooling water tower. A chemical treatment using chlorine dioxide is equally effective in getting rid of legionella bacteria in your cooling water tower.
As you can see, the right treatment for your cooling water tower is imperative when it comes to protecting the public and your business from damages. From the risk assessment to the application of either a chemical or non-chemical treatment, by choosing the right path you could be saving not only money, but lives as well.