Tucson, Arizona:  Zeta Corporation has estab­lished that its patent­ed Zeta Rod® tech­nol­o­gy is anoth­er weapon in the bat­tle against legionel­la. Zeta Rod sys­tems will remove and pre­vent recur­rence of biofilm and asso­ci­at­ed scale that shel­ters legionel­la bac­te­ria inside potable water sys­tems and in cool­ing tow­ers.

Legionella pneu­mophi­la bac­te­ria, accord­ing to the Centers for Disease Control, are ubiq­ui­tous in nature but rarely present a prob­lem to humans. The dan­ger exists when humans inhale tiny droplets of water con­tain­ing legionel­la. A healthy per­son should not be affect­ed, but a chron­i­cal­ly ill per­son or some­one recov­er­ing from a severe ill­ness or surgery is espe­cial­ly sus­cep­ti­ble and much more like­ly to devel­op legionel­la relat­ed sick­ness.

Samples of water were obtained and cul­tured for the com­mon forms of bac­te­ria involved in biofilm devel­op­ment. Cultures were exam­ined from the potable water sys­tems at large com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al instal­la­tions treat­ed by the Zeta Rod, and were found to con­tain almost no biofilm form­ing bac­te­ria. Adjacent build­ings using the same water sup­ply, but not treat­ed by the Zeta Rod, exhib­it­ed con­tin­ued evi­dence of biofilm form­ing bac­te­ria. Since the Zeta Rod is not proven to have a direct bio­ci­dal effect, it is thought that the dif­fer­ence in read­ings can be attrib­uted to the respec­tive pres­ence or absence of biofilm in the pip­ing sys­tems.

Biofilm is a slick coat­ing on wet­ted sur­faces pro­duced by many types of microbes. A thin lay­er of biofilm usu­al­ly coats the inte­ri­or of pip­ing and oth­er water han­dling equip­ment. This mate­r­i­al lay­er pro­vides both habi­tat and food sup­ply for a range of bac­te­ria, includ­ing the pro­to­zoa or amoe­ba that ingests and har­bors the Legionella organ­ism. Biofilm is high­ly resis­tant to cleans­ing by chem­i­cal and mechan­i­cal action. Biofilm dura­bil­i­ty is demon­strat­ed by its resis­tance to pen­e­tra­tion by bio­cides. Sheltered inside the biofilm, bac­te­ria repro­duce, pro­tect­ed from bio­cides such as chlo­rine or ozone. Areas of pip­ing that have been treat­ed to kill the bac­te­r­i­al pop­u­la­tion are often quick­ly rein­fect­ed by bac­te­ria that have sur­vived the treat­ment chem­i­cals. Full san­i­tiz­ing of water sys­tems and equip­ment is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble with­out con­trol­ling the devel­op­ment of the host biofilm and scale.

The Zeta Rod is an elec­tron­ic water treat­ment sys­tem that pre­vents micro­scop­ic par­ti­cles from stick­ing togeth­er. When par­ti­cles of min­er­al mat­ter stick togeth­er the prod­uct is scale. When bac­te­ria join togeth­er and mul­ti­ply the prod­uct is slime or biofilm. When, due to the Zeta Rod system’s effect, the deposits are no longer present, bio­ci­dal agents are able to attack direct­ly and destroy the released harm­ful microbes. Protozoa con­tain­ing legionel­la are known to live in, and take nutri­tion from, both scale and biofilm deposits. Legionella pneu­mophi­la bac­te­ria are car­ried with­in pro­to­zoa as they are trans­port­ed by aerosol droplets to human hosts. If the biofilm is no longer present, the pro­to­zoa can no longer sur­vive; with­out them, the Legionella pneu­mophi­la bac­te­ria are also no longer viable.

The Zeta Rod is the end result of the lat­est research to pre­vent foul­ing of indus­tri­al pip­ing and heat exchang­ers. Applied to potable water it pro­vides low cost, envi­ron­men­tal­ly safe deposit con­trol. Zeta Rod sys­tems are able to serve as a boost­er to improve the effi­cien­cy of a num­ber of dis­in­fect­ing chem­i­cals. The cleans­ing, dis­per­sant action pro­vid­ed by the Zeta Rod thus pro­vides syn­er­gis­tic sup­port for the full range of bio­ci­dal treat­ments.

Contact: Rodrigo F. V. Romo, Vice President, Zeta Corporation, Tucson, AZ USA
tel: 520−903−9904