JUST walking by a whirlpool on display in a home improvement store was enough
to give 23 people legionnaires’ disease and kill two of them, say US government
researchers.
In October 1996, health officials in Virginia noticed a high incidence of
pneumonia. Further investigation showed that several of the victims were
infected with the bacterium Legionella pneumophila, which causes
legionnaires’ disease.
Denise Benkel, then with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta, Georgia, says that old-fashioned epidemiology, including extensive
interviews with the sick people, led health officials to the source of the
infection: a display model of a…
