Facts

On January 12 of this year, the deadline under the German Drinking Water Ordinance expired for removing or decommissioning lead drinking water pipes from existing buildings.Since then, we have been flooded with inquiries from private homeowners and amateur landlords asking whether we can quickly carry out lead testing. With a heavy heart, we often have to refer them to our cooperating partner laboratories, as our business model does not allow us to process individual orders involving travel time.Nevertheless, we have taken this “flood of requests” as an opportunity to launch a product for our existing customers: random sampling for lead (Z samples) with an anniversary discount. Under Section 17 (1) of the Drinking Water Ordinance, which entered into force in June 2023, the operator of a water supply system in which drinking water pipes or sections of drinking water pipes made of lead are present [...]

The 33rd Epidemiological Bulletin of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), published on August 15, 2024, presents the TESLI study (Temperature Reduction and Legionella Incidence), which investigates whether the inflation-driven lowering of operating temperatures in domestic hot water storage systems in 2022 led to an increase in the incidence of reported cases of Legionnaires' disease. The study also illustrates the trends in average drinking water temperatures over time and the proportion of households that lowered their water temperature. These data were correlated with the incidence of Legionnaires' disease cases at the state level. WATERcontrol was one of the six laboratories approached that provided the RKI with anonymized large-scale drinking water datasets from commercially used drinking water installations for analysis purposes. Legionnaires' disease is the most common form of legionellosis, which manifests as pneumonia caused by Legionella bacteria. Legionella are environmental microorganisms found in water that thrive [...]