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Legionnaires' Bacteria Reemerges In Previously Disinfected Cooling Towers
schwit1 writes with the New York Times' unsettling report that 15 water-cooling towers in the Bronx that this week tested positive for Legionnaires' disease had been disinfected less than two months ago.
From the NYT: After an outbreak of the disease killed 12 people in July and August in the South Bronx, the city required every building with cooling towers, a common source of the Legionella bacteria that cause the disease, to be cleaned within two weeks. ... [The] city found this week that bacteria had regrown in at least 15 towers that had been cleaned recently in the Morris Park section of the Bronx. The testing occurred after a fresh outbreak in that area that has killed one person and sickened at least 12, and spurred an order from health officials for the towers to be disinfected again.
But, we forgot about lazy, cheap people.
Yes, chlorine or hydrogen peroxidation would solve this, but require some method to maintain the antiseptic aspect.
Copper sheeting might shed enough Cu ions for many years, but would ne replacing as it eroded away.
Newly installed cooling towers deal with this, as this search shows.
https://www.google.ca/search?q...
This is so typical of the Republicans.
This is the worst variation of the "Kevin Bacon Game." It's the Six Degrees of Political Connection, where any topic, no matter how neutral or broad in scope (like naturally occurring bacteria) can be linked to any political opinion.
Wasn't it Jim Gaffigan who pointed out the way to stop a conversation was with, "I'd like to talk to you about Jesus"?
Now it's, "I'd like to inject my my politics into whatever you just said."
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
The lazy people are almost certainly not personally affected in this case. Ultimately the responsible parties here are landlords who don't properly maintain their buildings, and very few of the landlords who own buildings in the South Bronx actually live in the South Bronx themselves.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
that's actually the problem with most technology
nuclear for example
i haven't a single doubt that we have the technological means to maintain nuclear plants forever without a single accident
but what we don't have is the social and political means to do that
money is always being cut, indefinitely, and the people making that decision are not exactly technically proficient. the incentive to cut costs form the general public and bosses who want to trumpet cost cutting trumps all other concerns, because other concerns, no matter how vital, are simply not understood. combine that with a technical person that responds with anger and arrogance at the idea of vital safety mechanisms being underfunded, the manager will simply disregard him or her as a person with a personality problem, and then disasters happen
people who champion nuclear, especially on a website like this, understand the technology well, and are correct when they announce we never have to have a nuclear accident ever again due to technological issues
but they don't consider the political and social aspects of our species that means vital funding of safety mechanisms and maintenance of absolutely crucial technology *will* be broken. it's simply a matter of when, not if
and then people who champion nuclear get angry at people like me, and accuse us of not understanding the technology. oh we understand the technology is wonderful. but it is you who doesn't understand humanity
the imperative on cutting costs and doing as little effort as possible is always trumping all other concerns. always. and people like this wind up being the managers, not the underlings. they can't be fired, they do the firing
incompetence is a force that destroys everything. sober up and accept that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You said the key word there: Biofilms
Odds are that they never actually (or fully) disinfected the system. A lot of bacteria remained, sheltered by biofilm, and disinfectants are proven to be ineffective against biofilm. After they "cleaned" it and checked the bacteria levels, it was just a matter of time before the biofilm naturally continued releasing the bacteria...
We understand humanity. You don't understand statistics. When there's a nuclear accident, it's big and scary and gets reported by all the press. When there's a coal, wind, or solar accident, it's small and doesn't get reported by the press. If you base your statistics on what's reported on the news, you get a skewed view of the dangers of these power sources. It's like planes vs cars. Every airliner crash gets reported on the national news. But car accident fatalities are rarely recorded. The erroneous reporting bias is large enough that some people are deathly afraid of flying, even though you're statistically more likely to die in a car accident on the way to/from the airport than on the flight itself.
Likewise, nuclear is the safest power source man has invented. Despite the accidents, despite the human failures you cite (Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were caused by operator error). It has produced the fewest casualties per unit of power generated of all power sources. Did you know that the month of the Fukushima accident, when zero people were killed by nuclear power, one person was killed by wind power? A school in Ohio forgot to lock the gate to their wind turbine. A student climbed up it, and fell to his death. Human error affects all power sources, not just nuclear. If anything, nuclear is safer because of the increased scrutiny it gets.