Legionella testing can be conducted by a private service provider, including a professional water testing company or consultant, or alternatively by the public owner, as long as they are properly trained and are regulated to do this. Essentially, this means that a company is permitted to carry out internal legionella testing within their premises, just like the legionella safety assessment process itself. The problem arises when the home or building in question has been recently built and has not been left to fully mature. In these circumstances, it is likely that the levels of naturally occurring legionella within the building will be higher than that which would be expected naturally. Therefore, an assessment by a professional water testing company will be able to detect this within the building before any customers of the property are potentially affected by the potentially harmful levels of legionella.

legionella risk assessment leeds

It is often the case that many people find that they carry the bacteria on their skin for much of their lives. For example, people who work in an environment where they come into contact with food or other materials which have had contact with raw meat, may develop legionnaires disease within a few weeks of coming into contact with the bacteria. The main way in which this form of the disease is spread is through contact with infected skin, and therefore it is necessary to carry out regular tests to detect this quickly so as to prevent anyone from being affected.

In many cases, if the testing company are unable to identify the exact strain of bacteria involved, then the most common way of diagnosis is to look at the results obtained from samples taken from one person, or to look at those taken from several people. This is because certain strains of the bacteria may not produce symptoms, while others can. For instance, when looking to identify a specific type of bacteria, laboratories will usually look for evidence of a chronic or recurrent infection (usually a lung infection), pneumonia, meningitis, encephalitis, etc… If you have recently come into contact with hot water tanks in any way, you should arrange for a sample to be taken as soon as possible, as this will help to bring forward any findings.