Overview and comparison of Legionella regulations worldwide.

BACKGROUND: Legionnaires disease occurs worldwide. Many authorities have guidelines and regulations to prevent and control Legionella in water systems. These regulations are based on often very limited field and laboratory observations and measurements. They are, therefore, very different from country to country. This article aims to map the existing regulatory framework of worldwide Legionella control to assess the feasibility of regulatory unification. METHODS: This article gives an overview of the different standards, guidelines, and recommendations as well as how various authorities and/or countries deal with Legionella infection. A 3-step process is followed to identify current regulations. RESULTS: Although Legionella is a global concern with a common scientific base, the regulatory framework is different from country to country. The current guidelines and standards are not the best possible. Despite different regulatory frameworks, there is still broad unification of underlying principles. Common principles across regulations are avoiding and monitoring critical spots, avoiding water stagnation, and maintaining sufficiently high temperature (above 60°C, below 25°C). Differences between regulations are target group and dangerous Legionella concentration levels. CONCLUSIONS: The comparative analysis of the framework is a good starting point for reaching future regulatory unification based on common ground.

An improved calculation of the exergy of natural resources for exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA).

The focus in environmental research is shifting from emission abatement to critical process analysis, including assessment of resource consumption. The exergy theory offers a thermodynamic methodology to account for the consumption of natural resources. However, exergy data on mineral resources available in the literature are inadequate to apply to exergetic life cycle analysis, due to incompleteness, inconsistencies, and a dated thermochemical basis. An uncertainty assessment of the data has to be performed as well. In this work, three recent thermochemical databases were applied to evaluate the chemical exergy of 85 elements and 73 minerals, 21 of which had not yet been quantified in the literature. The process required the choice of a new reference species for aluminum. Muscovite was selected, giving rise to a chemical exergy of 809.4 kJ/mol for aluminum. The theory proved to be robust for the exergy of chemical elements, as exergy values differing by 1.2% on average from most recent literature were found. On the contrary, the exergy values for minerals differed by factors up to 14 from literature values, due to the application of recent thermochemical values and consistently selected reference species. The consistent dataset of this work will enable straightforward resource intake evaluation through an exergetic life cycle assessment.