Legionnaires' Disease Tied To Sump Pump NEW YORK (Reuters) -- For the first time, an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease has been linked to a sump pump. In September of 1996, three people (the owner, a waitress, and a customer) who spent time at a bar in St. Louis, Missouri, developed Legionnaires' disease, a potentially fatal form of pneumonia. Dr. J.L. Kool and colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, investigated the case and determined that a severe rainstorm had caused the sump pump in the bar's basement to work almost continuously for three days. "It is possible that the pump produced sufficient heat during flooding to provide environmental temperatures favourable for the growth of Legionella," the authors write in the April 4th issue of The Lancet. The researchers suggest that sawdust and rotting wood helped spread the disease through cracks in the bar's floor after a jet of water came out a small hole in the side of the sump pump. After the pump was disconnected, no new cases of Legionnaires' disease were linked to the bar. "To our knowledge, this is the first time that a sump pump has been implicated as the source of an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease," the investigators state. They call for a better understanding of how Legionnaires' disease may develop from previously unrecognized sources. SOURCE: The Lancet (1998;351:1030)
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