Chair Schulman on how Legionnaires spreads from towers to infection

Okay.

So I'm going to ask that you, by the way, we've been joined by Councilmember Areola, I just want to acknowledge.

Can you walk us through how exactly, because I would like to know, I think others would too, how Legionnaire's disease spreads from the

initial proliferation of Legionella bacteria in a cooling tower or building water system through the release of contaminated water droplets to the development of infection?

Absolutely.

This is an educational, yes.

Absolutely.

Yeah, so what we see with Legionnaire's disease clusters like the one that we're talking about here today is the Legionella bacteria contaminates that water, that warm, stagnant water we've been talking about.

And then that water, the mist.

That is expelled from the top of the cooling tower, that mist can carry

small amounts of that bacteria and people inhale that mist and then that is what can basically trigger the beginning of Legionnaire's disease.

Do we know, like how long does it take to get to a point where

Do we know that?

Where, get point, to which point?

When it gets to the point of like becoming, you know, a deadly bacteria that, I mean, how long does it have to, what, fester in the water?

Is it, as soon as it becomes?

As soon as it's detected, that's at the point.

You mean the valve?

of bacteria in the cooling tower.

It's such an important question and it's one that we don't really know.

And that's part of, that is one of the challenges.

And so that is why the regulation sets out tiers for response because we want,

and again, why the monthly sampling is so important, although we are in early days, so we don't know yet how effective that's going to be, but our idea is it's going to give operators very early information when that bacteria is starting to grow so they can take corrective action,

do their confirmatory sampling and see if it's happened and see if that remediation has been effective.

And if not, then there's the next step for them to do to continue to remediate.

So there isn't a perfect answer to your very important question.

No, and I appreciate that.

And so.

Doctor, from what you said, so if it's really windy out and you have it, it can spread further, I'm guessing.

Well, you're putting your finger on something that's very important, right?

So when we have these clusters,

It is not clear where exactly the source is, and the mist that comes from the coin tower can absolutely migrate.

And that's why we have a fairly large region that we look at.

In this case, it was these three zip codes that we were looking at because of exactly what you're describing.

You expanded, I think, the zip code, too, if I recall correctly.

We did, actually, yeah.

And maybe I can...

Pass it to Corinne Schifter to describe a little bit more on that.

I would say that when these clusters happen, we're really doing detective work in different parts of the department.

We're getting information from my team that's taking samples from the cooling towers and knows where the cooling towers are, from Dr.

Howard's team who's doing case investigations, and from the laboratory scientists who are telling us what's happening from the cooling tower samples.

And as more information comes in, that helps us further define the area of risk.

And so sometimes, as we did here, the initial area, we needed to expand it.

And really, the thing that we are trying to do is get that message out to New Yorkers, because we know that once the cases have started, that exposure is underway, and we want to get that message to people.

They've already been exposed.

We want them to listen to their bodies and get quickly into health care.