Legionnaires' disease has hit the newspaper headlines again here in Victoria, following two recent outbreaks, with the latest in Doncaster resulting in the tragic death of one person, and the hospitalization of others.

The source was traced by health officials last week to cooling towers located on commercial buildings at two sites within close proximity to the very busy Westfield Doncaster shopping centre, and also within metres of residential housing. It's a timely reminder that Legionella bacteria will never be eliminated from our environment, and that if anything, the risk is as big as it has ever been.

"The latest tragedy adds to a shocking year for legionnaire's outbreaks in which 40 cases have already been reported, including three deaths - more than double the number of cases recorded last year, in which four people died," said a report in last week's Herald Sun newspaper.

The numbers look bad. It has also been reported that of the 40 cases reported this year, 26 have been traced back to air conditioning systems (read cooling towers). It has prompted Dr John Carnie, Victoria's Chief Health Officer to write to almost 4000 businesses and state authorities to remind them of their obligations in maintaining cooling towers.

It makes you wonder why, as an industry or indeed a nation, we persist with the use of cooling towers when safe alternatives have been available for many years now, including ours at Muller Industries.

Not only is the threat of Legionella ever-present, but the required management and maintenance regime is a costly one, typically involving heavy chemical treatment that is also damaging to the environment when dumped into the sewer. Add to that the potential damage to branding that an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease can have, and you've got an ongoing cost and potential cost which is difficult to reconcile against safe alternatives.

At the recent FMI trade show Muller Industries North America attended in Las Vegas, our team heard many times that "we don't have Legionnaires' disease here", when the truth is there are something like 100,000 cases per annum in the United States that largely go unreported as Legionnaires' diseases is, unbelievably, not a notifiable disease there.

Thankfully, the reverse is true in Australia, and is one of the reasons why the disease is so well known here.