Chem-Aqua - Your Trusted Water Treatment Partner

  • 21 February 2023
  • Author: Chem-Aqua, Inc
  • Number of views: 2557
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Chem-Aqua - Your Trusted Water Treatment Partner

For decades, Chem-Aqua has provided custom treatment programs that solve waterside problems and make water systems more efficient. With representation in over 50 countries across the globe, we provide programs for water systems in manufacturing, food and beverage, healthcare, data centers, educational, office, government, and hospitality facilities.

COVID-19:  A Partnership Approach to Water Treatment Is More Important than Ever

  • 21 April 2020
  • Author: Jeff Lazor
  • Number of views: 4217
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COVID-19:  A Partnership Approach to Water Treatment Is More Important than Ever

With the impact of COVID-19, the ongoing partnership between plant personnel and your water treatment provider is more important than ever. Water systems, such as cooling towers and boilers, are dynamic systems by design. In today’s environment, they may not be operating as consistently as before with entire processes or facilities being shut down with little warning and, just as quickly, started back up.

How Does Legionella Get Into My Building?

  • 7 April 2020
  • Author: Dominick Tuzzo
  • Number of views: 4327
  • 0 Comments
How Does Legionella Get Into My Building?

Whether your building is newly constructed or even 100+ years old, chances are, sooner or later, it can become colonized with opportunistic premise plumbing pathogens (OPPP’s) such as Legionella. 

As facultative intracellular pathogens, meaning they are capable of living either inside or outside of other host cells, Legionella enters your building water system(s) as an endosymbiont of another organism.  Translated:  they hitch a ride into your building inside of amoeboid cells which, incidentally, function as their natural host organisms in the aquatic environment.

COVID-19 and the Internet of Water Treatment

  • 31 March 2020
  • Author: Jeff Lazor
  • Number of views: 4466
  • 0 Comments
COVID-19 and the Internet of Water Treatment

COVID-19 has brought the phrase “social distancing” to the forefront, and many locations won’t allow nonessential employees or vendors on site at all.  Not only has this changed the world we live in, but the outbreak has changed the value proposition for water treatment controls and services.  It has forced us to proceed quickly into the future.

Addressing Stagnant Water in Buildings Due to COVID-19 Shutdowns

  • 23 March 2020
  • Author: Chem-Aqua, Inc
  • Number of views: 6180
  • 0 Comments
Addressing Stagnant Water in Buildings Due to COVID-19 Shutdowns

As coronavirus continues to spread across the country, many facilities including college dorms, hotels, vacation condos, shopping malls, and other buildings are being shut down unexpectedly or operated with very low occupancy.  As a result, building water systems that normally have hundreds or thousands of gallons of water flowing through the fixtures, piping, and equipment daily may be stagnant for an unknown period of time, maybe several months. 

Where Should I Sample for Legionella?

  • 3 March 2020
  • Author: Dominick Tuzzo
  • Number of views: 3680
  • 0 Comments
Where Should I Sample for Legionella?

Should your Water Management Plan (WMP) Program Team decide to utilize environmental water sampling to validate the effectiveness of the WMP, ANSI/ASHRAE 188-2018 advises that these tests should be performed by a laboratory accredited to a nationally or internationally recognized standard (e.g., ISO/IEC 17025:2017), with Legionellaa included in the laboratory’s scope of accreditation.

Before environmental sampling is undertaken, a Sampling Plan should be formulated.  This plan should list the devices and Points of Use (POUs) to be sampled, at what frequency sampling will be performed, what the acceptable control limits will be, and what the response protocol will be for any sample result(s) falling outside of the previously-established control limits. 

Legionella Control Policy vs Water Management Plans

  • 19 November 2019
  • Author: Dominick Tuzzo
  • Number of views: 5005
  • 0 Comments
Legionella Control Policy vs Water Management Plans

We are often asked to review, audit, improve upon, or otherwise comment on Water Management Plans (WMP’s) consisting of no more than a few pages of boilerplate text which, in reality, are actually NOT Water Management ‘Plans’ at all.  Rather, they are simply Legionella control policies.

So, what’s the difference between a “Policy” and a “Plan”?

Policy (always a noun):  a course, principles, rules, guidelines, etc., proposed or formulated by an organization, government, business, or individual, typically published or promulgated throughout the organization, in order to direct organizational behavior towards (or away from) a particular goal, objective, or condition. 

Water Crisis in America

What We Can Learn from Flint

Water Crisis in America

On a recent episode of the Public Broadcasting Systems’ Frontline “Flint’s Deadly Water,” investigative reporters looked deeply at the city of Flint from 2014 to now in hopes of identifying the true causes of the water crisis and the cause of the many deaths. As an outsider, we immediately associate Flint with a lead crisis, which undoubtedly remains an issue. However, Frontline finally dives deeper and states that Legionnaires Disease is the true public health crisis that happened in Flint. Below is a summary of the research they did and their findings.

My Building Water System Tested Positive for Legionella: Now What?

  • 23 July 2019
  • Author: Dominick Tuzzo
  • Number of views: 5021
  • 0 Comments
My Building Water System Tested Positive for Legionella: Now What?

We detected the presence of Legionella in one or more of our building water systems….. Now what do we do? This is probably the second most commonly asked question, surpassed only by:  “Do I have to test my water systems for Legionella?”  Often the question is posed this way:

“We recently performed Legionella testing on our building water systems and found one or more positive sample results.  What should we do about it?”

Ice Machines and Legionella

A Growing Problem

Ice Machines and Legionella

Each day people all over the world are exposed to ice. Whether it be from their refrigerator ice machine, their favorite restaurant, during their hospital stay, or on an airplane, people sip on their ice cold beverages or suck on ice chips unaware of the microorganisms that could be sitting dormant within the ice.

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