KEY POINTS:
Ministry of Health officials were investigating a system that would require owners of water cooling towers to make test results available to medical officers of health, a coroner heard today.
Southland-Central Otago Coroner Trevor Savage is holding an inquest into the deaths of three Christchurch people from legionella in the 2005 winter.
The deaths were part of an outbreak of 19 cases clustered in southwest Christchurch. Attention has focused on a cooling tower at the Ravensdown fertiliser plant in Hornby as a possible source of the disease.
The inquest is hearing evidence on the deaths of Ross Hern, 56, Peter Jones, 48, and Valmai Finlayson, 87, who died of legionnaire's disease in Christchurch Hospital in June, July and August 2005.
Giving evidence this afternoon, a senior technical adviser to the Department of Building and Housing, Bruce Trevor Klein, told the coroner that since 2004 all new buildings with water cooling towers required a building compliance certificate. Owners were required to test their systems regularly for bacterial organisms.
Cooling towers under the 2004 Act had to be sited away from building air conditioning intake systems.
Building owners must furnish annual documents showing the cooling towers had been tested monthly for legionella bacteria.
Legislation required owners or operators of cooling towers showing a level of legionella bacteria exceeding 1000 colony-forming units (cfus) should notify a medical officer of health within 48 hours.
Test results had to be retained for two years.
Questioned by Mr Savage, Mr Klein said his department would need to investigate whether it would support the mandatory reporting of all water cooler test results to health authorities.
He cautioned against Canterbury Medical Officer of Health Alister Humphrey's earlier assertion that New Zealand should adopt Australia's reporting system.
Mr Klein said he understood the Ministry of Health was investigating adopting a system that would require the mandatory reporting of high legionella bacterial counts.
As the law stood now, building owners, cooling tower operators and laboratories had no onus to make such reports available despite having to test regularly and retain results.
Questioned by Donna Blandford, niece of the late Mr Hern, Mr Klein said under the Building Act, cooling tower owners or operators faced fines of up to $200,000 for non-compliance.
He was unaware of any prosecutions.
Earlier, Dr Humphrey told the inquest New Zealand should adopt a compulsory regime for testing and reporting on legionaire's disease.
"It is appropriate that New Zealand moves to adopt a compulsory regime," he said. "It will in my view minimise the risk of another outbreak and will be likely to save lives."
Ravensdown company lawyer Robert asked about gaps in the testing of cooling towers, and reporting of results under the present voluntary regime, and Dr Humphrey agreed it was possible that none of the cases came from the Ravensdown cooling tower.
But Dr Humphrey also said: "Our view is that there is no way you can say none of them came from that point source. Everything pointed to a cluster in the southwest of Christchurch around the plant we are talking about, with what we found to be genetically identical species of legionella."
He agreed with Mr Osborne that the strain was the ubiquitous Christchurch type of the disease.
Inquiries by health officials during the outbreak turned up 141 cooling towers. Some of the owners or those leasing the buildings had not co-operated by testing and providing results and had to be visited by officials.
It meant there were gaps in the knowledge of what was happening during the April to August outbreak. When tests were done it was not known how many had already used biocide to kill organisms in the cooling systems -- a call made by health officials to contain the outbreak.
Species of legionella bacteria were widely found in lakes, rivers, groundwater and soil. The inquest was told it was "generally benign" until it became aerosolised, was turned into a mist and spread. This could be through hot water systems, air cooling systems, cooling towers, water spraying devices, water sprinklers, demisters, and spa pools.
An Auckland outbreak had been traced to a high pressure hose used in a boat washing operation.
The inquest is scheduled to continue tomorrow.
- NZPA
