Posted on 11/11/2017 3:14:42 PM PST by BenLurkin
The towers are in a backstage area near the New Orleans Square Train Station, each more than 100 feet from areas accessible to guests, a Disneyland Resort spokeswoman said Friday. A Disneyland employee is among those who fell ill with the disease.
“On Oct. 27, we learned from the Orange County Health Care Agency of increased Legionnaires’ disease cases in Anaheim. We conducted a review and learned that two cooling towers had elevated levels of Legionella bacteria,” Dr. Pamela Hymel, chief medical officer for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, said in a statement Friday. “These towers were treated with chemicals that destroy the bacteria and are currently shut down.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified county authorities about three weeks ago of several cases of the disease among people who had traveled to Orange County in September. County epidemiologists discovered that a cluster of people diagnosed with the disease had recently visited, lived or worked in Anaheim and contacted Disney after learning that several of them had gone to the theme park. According to the health agency, on Nov. 3 Disney reported that routine testing had detected elevated levels of Legionella in two cooling towers a month earlier, and the towers had been disinfected. Disney took the towers out of service on Nov. 1, performed more testing and disinfection, and brought them back into service on Nov. 5.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
GO THERE !
ping
It’s just a new attraction.
Can’t you get legionnaire’s disease a whole lot cheaper than shelling out $1000 to take your family to D Land??
Very few, in my time there from 2009 to 2015.
All y’need is one with access to the ‘fridge.
Cooling tower water is notorious for not being maintained. It takes a lot of maintenance to keep it in shape and nobody does it.
Back in the 80’s I worked on many of them. You are constantly blowing air through a captive supply of warm water. Perfect conditions to grow nasty stuff.
I heard that the Disneyland cooling towers were a very sensitive and special micro-environment in which a very rare subspecies of Legionella is found; the only place in the whole world that is home to this endangered species.
Perhaps Disney-Pixar can feature a friendly but misunderstood Gram-negative bacteria as the main character in their next animated blockbuster.
Maybe the CDC needs to upgrade Privnar 13 to Prevnar 14.
War, Famine, Pestilence, DEATH.
But the people are not at war, no famine, yet the other two are still with us.
Disney....is that the company that is now normalizing homosexual behaviour in its children’s programming? That Disney?
BFL
You are pretty much right on describing things but I'll take it some steps further.
First, you're absolutely correct on the water treatment aspect. However, if the water is allowed to really get that bad via inadequate cooling water treatment there are going to some really poor performing units because of plugging thus reducing water flows and corrosion that results in higher maintenance costs. These are not things that a cheapskate manager can hide from his bosses for long or a shady water treatment vendor to prolong so it's unlikely to be extended mistreatment of the water as a root cause.
The primary cause of Legionella outbreaks has been stagnant water due to poor distribution piping design (think hotels) or non-engineered field modifications (this is where the cheapskate or ignorant operating manager comes into the picture), both of which lead to stagnant water that does not get exposed adequately to the treatment chemicals. Chemicals used for cooling towers are normally chlorine (continuously), a non-oxidizing biocide (slug fed on a routine schedule) and corrosion inhibitors. Legionella bacteria are extremely sensitive to chlorine in the water so it doesn't take anything exotic chemical wise to prevent or eliminate.
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But don”t we have a bit of chlorine in our water already?
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