A recent IHEEM seminar on water hygiene and safety, ‘The Invisible Threat’, saw John Newbold, an HM specialist inspector at the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) with experience investigating Legionella cases and outbreaks, provide useful insight into how healthcare estates engineers and other ‘responsible’ personnel could ensure compliance with the law by properly ‘managing and controlling’ Legionella risk.
He provided a first-hand view of what he dubbed ‘some of the common mistakes’ made by those responsible for managing water system safety, and gave useful advice and guidance on how to avoid them, and thus minimise the risk of falling foul of the HSE and other regulators. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.
Introducing John Newbold at the second of two IHEEM seminars on water hygiene and safety to be held within the same week in July, first in Leeds, and secondly in London, the event’s chair, David Harper, explained that the speaker had worked for the Health and Safety Executive since 1991, and was among those to have contributed substantially to the HSE’s L8 Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) document, Legionnaires’ disease: The control of Legionella bacteria in water systems, which was published in 2001. The HSE speaker explained that his presentation would examine the requirements of the current regulatory environment for controlling risks from Legionella, and the HSE’s ongoing work to review its own existing guidance, including the L8 ACoP document, which is now widely regarded as the industry standard on Legionella in water systems.
Looking at the ‘known knowns’
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