Jon Henley in Paris
Thursday January 8, 2004

Police opened a manslaughter inquiry yesterday into France's worst outbreak of legionnaires' disease, which has killed seven people and infected 59 more near the town of Lens in the north of the country.

The environment minister, Roselyne Bachelot, has caused uproar by revealing that a petrochemical factory, seen as the likely source of the epidemic, had failed to close down its cooling tower in mid-October despite discovering bacteria levels some 700 times higher than normal.

"The test results were seven times higher than the level at which plants must be shut down immediately, and the health and safety authorities notified," Ms Bachelot said.

Instead, she said, the company had disinfected the tower and waited a month before telling the authorities.

The management of the Noroxo plant, which makes industrial alcohols, said yesterday that the relevant authorities approved its actions and it was not convinced that it was responsible for the outbreak.

"No plausible mechanism of contamination has been established in these installations, which are far removed from any housing and equipped with all necessary protective systems," the company said, pointing out that none of its 150 employees had been affected by the disease.

Noroxo, owned by the US oil giant ExxonMobil, was placed under surveillance in November and closed for most of December after dangerous concentrations of bacteria were found in the tower. The closure coincided with the first cases of the disease.

A second wave of cases followed the factory's reopening on December 20 and may have been caused by bacteria spread during the cleaning operation, health experts said.

Fourteen victims of the epidemic have been found to be infected with the same strain of the disease as that discovered in the Noroxo tower.

Gilles Brucker, the head of France's public health watchdog, said the spread of the disease through the air was "unprecedented" in France. He said he had warned the government more than a year ago that not enough was being done to enforce rules on cleaning towers.

Legionnaires' disease spreads through infected water or aerosols and is associated with buildings such as hospitals or hotels.

Web Source