For over 10 years, Inland Sales Group has been trying to raise awareness of Legionella. Most people in the United States know nothing about it — where does it come from, how does it get into our bodies and what does the plumbing world have anything to do with it?

As an infectious disease microbiologist who has studied Legionnaires’ disease for over 30 years, I have spent hundreds of hours with plumbing professionals, often alongside them in hot and dirty mechanical spaces. I often joke that this qualifies me as an apprentice in plumbing!

My last two columns discussed both chemical and non-chemical additives or technologies that I treat as “must consider” for plumbing engineers in their design practices to reduce the risk of Legionella bacteria developing in the domestic water system. As I mentioned, these topics might not be a code minimum requirement, but as an engineering community, we have a responsibility to uphold the health and safety of the public. Therefore, we should discuss these technologies with our clients for many different building types we come across in our design.

ASPE intends for this guide to be periodically updated to provide the latest innovations in Legionella and waterborne pathogen mitigation in building water systems and invites participation from all stakeholders.

The deadline to apply is March 1.

Many of the topics I have discussed in my column to this point have been about temperature considerations within the supply and return system based on recommendations in the community and right-sizing domestic water piping to reduce the overall volume of water in the building’s piping system.

Here’s a countdown of the top 10 articles you read the most in 2021 based on the number of unique pageviews on www.pmengineer.com.

There has been a lot of discussion and new guidance documentation about Legionella in building water systems and the implementation of water management programs (WMP) for ongoing operations. This has led to discussions about plumbing engineering best practices to allow the building water distribution system (BWDS) to operate efficiently and safely when the building is occupied.

With new and emerging water management standards, critical environments such as health care facilities must retool their systems and retrain their workers to provide better care quality and ensure patient safety throughout the built environment.