Following the successful implementation of the MALDI-ToF technique, which removes the presumptive stage for all bacteria, ALS Environmental will be changing the standard read days for our ISO11731 culture based Legionella analysis from days 4, 8 and 10 to days 3, 7 and 10 from Monday 30th June 2014.

The ability for us to read the plates a day quicker is based on our ability to rapidly identify potential Legionella colonies using the MALDI-ToF technique which requires less colony to be present to run the confirmation as opposed to the standard agglutination technique.

Screening the Legionella culture plates on day 3 enables ALS Environmental to report confirmed Legionella isolates at a Market leading 40% (2 days) quicker than other laboratories that use classical microbiology techniques where isolates are present on culture plates.

In addition to the reduced confirmation time for positive samples ALS Environmental are also able to offer a full species identification of the Legionella genus in over 98% of analytical samples. We have one of the worlds largest databases of Legionella species and are able to identify over 60 species, including Legionella anisa, Legionella drozanskii and Legionella spiritensis.

The new method of analysis vastly reduces time to a confirmed result whilst also giving significant new information on the bacterial isolates.  The reduction in confirmation times removes the risk associated with acting on presumptive data by providing a confirmed, accredited result in the same time as the traditional confirmation approach provides a presumptive result.

ALS Environmental Microbiology Manager Pervinder Johal comments:

By being able to provide our customers with confirmed Legionella results after 3 days incubation, we can fully support the protection of Public Health. Our limit of detection of 20 colony forming units per litre (cfu/L) means even low-level Legionella contamination can be identified and managed in accordance to HSG 274 and ACoP L8.

We are the first environmental contract testing laboratory in the UK to be able to offer this unique analysis for Drinking Waters, Legionella, Healthcare and Environmental samples with UKAS ISO 17025:2005 accreditation.

In addition to rapid Legionella confirmation, the MALDI-ToF technique is also able to provide ALS customers with reduced reporting times for all of our Drinking Water Microbiology parameters. Again, in most instances we are able to provide a full species identification for most of these parameters at reduced confirmation times for positives.

If you would like more details on our change in Legionella read times, or more information on our MALDI-ToF confirmation technique and the benefits it can offer your company please
e-mail or call the Coventry office on 02476 42 12 13.