About Legionella Screen

What we do

We publish three things and no more. What a water management program is required to contain and where sampling sits inside it. What a sample can establish, at one point, on one day, and what a result therefore cannot be made to mean. And which laboratories appear on the CDC ELITE public roster, listed as themselves, with what that enrolment proves and what it does not.

We sell no water treatment chemicals, no remedial works, no sampling and no analysis, and we take no commission on any of them. A company that supplies the treatment has a structural reason to conclude that the answer is more treatment, and a company that sells the sampling has one to conclude that the answer is more samples. Removing both reasons is the point, and it is the only reason a list of laboratories on this site is worth reading.

We do not diagnose illness, do not interpret a result as a health matter, and do not advise on health. If a person is unwell, that is a matter for a doctor and for the local health department, and it is more urgent than anything on this site.

Why it exists

Around two thirds of the search traffic on this subject is people trying to understand what they are obliged to do. What they find is largely capability pages from testing companies, and a quantity of alarming content that treats a building water system as a horror story.

Neither answers the question a building manager actually has, which is: what is the sensible next step for this building, this month, with this budget. Frequently the honest answer is “write down your water systems and put flushing in the turnover checklist”, which is nobody's product.

The boundary this site does not cross

This is health-adjacent territory, and the boundary is drawn deliberately and in the same place on every page.

• No interpretation of results, and no thresholds or action levels published anywhere.
• No health advice, no description of symptoms, no statement about any individual.
• No claim that a negative result means a building is safe, or that testing resolves a health situation.
• No collection of health information about anyone, at any point in the form.
• Where illness is involved: public health authorities and clinicians first, said plainly and enforced in the form itself.

Verify the provider yourself

1. Ask which laboratory will run the analysis, and what it is accredited for.
2. Ask which method will be used, and why that one.
3. Ask who collects the samples and under what documented procedure.
4. Ask for a written sampling plan before agreeing to a price.

Four questions, and they filter more effectively than any directory. Put them to whoever quotes, including the professional your request is passed to.

How it is paid, and what that means

Providers pay to receive requests. Visitors pay nothing, and any price quoted is a matter between the visitor and the company quoting it.

On this subject the incentive that creates deserves more than a footnote: a platform paid per request has a reason to encourage testing in every situation, including the ones where a program matters more. The editorial policy below is the counterweight, and the health notice in the form is the part that is not negotiable.

Editorial policy

• No prices, ranges or averages.
• No thresholds, action levels or interpretation of any result.
• No requirement stated as a national rule; the variation between states, particularly on cooling towers, is enormous.
• No health advice and no symptom description, in any form.
• No invented accreditations, partners, reviews, client names or project counts.
• No alarming imagery: no depiction of organisms, no warning symbols, no red anywhere in the palette.

Reporting an error

If something here is wrong, a description of a method, a characterization of a program, an account of how a process works, we would rather be told than left repeating it. Pages carry a review date.

Contact details are on the legal notice.