Centralight

Purified BY DAN DIGMANN Faculty research results in push to test hospital water water Three CMU faculty members are calling for federal mandates to regularly test tap water to protect patients from infections caused by waterborne pathogens. Through their study, health sciences faculty and researchers Zigmond Kozicki, Mark Cwiek and John Lopes looked further into the realities that patients with weak immune systems, infants and the elderly are particularly at risk for infection from exposure to waterborne pathogens. Each year more than 2 million hospital-acquired infections occur in the U.S., with 10 percent resulting in deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many of these infections likely are waterborne. "We have a threat to millions of Americans who go into hospitals for treatment," Kozicki says. "We're calling for action by the government and regulatory agencies to raise the standard of tap water quality in our U.S. health care facilities." Cleaning up in a hospital shower after exercising in its health club is something that now concerns Kozicki. The former hospital administrator knows there are health risks associated with the water, so he lets the shower run for at least a minute before stepping under it to clear the nozzle of a potential build-up of waterborne pathogens. "It isn't that people aren't doing their job keeping the facility clean but rather because there's nothing consistently being done to test and treat the water for waterborne pathogens," says Kozicki, who with Cwiek and Lopes recently released a study that questions the quality of water in U.S. hospitals. A national survey of U.S. hospitals, conducted by CMU's Center for Applied Research and Rural Studies, found the frequency of water testing in hospital facilities to be inconsistent. The results revealed the following irregularity of water testing among the 900 hospitals surveyed: • 9.9 percent test daily • 8.4 percent test weekly • 1 percent test biweekly • 27.5 percent test monthly • 15.8 percent test yearly "We found very few hospitals are testing for a wide variety of known pathogens that may be in the water, and those that are testing are doing it very infrequently," Kozicki say. "Most, if not all, hospitals across the U.S. are putting patients at risk by not testing water for pathogens." The source of water for 94.1 percent of the hospitals in the survey was municipal water. While municipalities test the water at its source, the survey demonstrates how few and infrequent hospitals test the water once it runs through miles of pipes and is dispensed and used in the hospitals. "The most overlooked and controllable potential source of hospital acquired infection is pathogens in tap water," Cwiek says. "People come to the hospital for care and treatment. They're not expecting to be exposed to something that's going to make them sicker." CMU researchers are advocating for weekly water testing at a minimum. In addition, they advocate all health care facilities should be required to have a formal waterborne risk management plan, a waterborne infection response team and waterborne pathogen training for all staff. "If regular monitoring can be established, they'll just have to test and see that nothing is wrong with the water," Lopes says. "Waterborne pathogens likely will be rare episodic incidents that can be quickly treated." In this call to action, five organizations are being targeted to help implement the steps necessary for hospitals to properly test for waterborne pathogens: the American Hospital Association, the Joint Commission, The American College of Healthcare Executives, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the insurance industry. • Liquid measures As general protection from waterborne pathogens in hospitals, CMU researchers suggest the following measures for hospital patients: • Bring your own drinking water or ask for distilled water • Don't use hospital showers, unless they have point-of-use filters • Be aware of where waterborne pathogens can be found, including potable water, cooling towers, nebulizers, humidifiers, vaporizers, sinks, hydrotherapy pools, whirlpools, dialysis water, eyewash stations, flower vases. Zigmond Kozicki and his team are looking at how water impacts human health and are making recommendations that can reduce the incidence of health care acquired infections for millions of people across the country. 24 centralight summer '12

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