• Hometown Heroes Make Their Mark at The Beijing Olympics
• H₂O news Profile: Dr. Norman Neumann
• Coaching for Cleaner Water
• Record-Setting Performance in Racine, Wisconsin
• G.R. Micro Runs Lean
• H₂O Fact and Tech Tip

We expect awe-inspiring athletic performances at the Olympics, and this past summer’s Beijing Olympiad did not disappoint. But as we celebrate the medal-winning feats of Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and Chen Ruolin, we should also give credit to the unsung Olympic heroes whose efforts were, in their own way, extraordinary. Cases in point: Beijing Water Supply Company and Beijing Wastewater Treatment Company.

China implemented a stringent new drinking water standard in advance of the Olympics. And as leader of the Beijing Water Supply Company’s testing department, Yin Baoguo was charged with meeting that standard—a job made all the more daunting by the need to provide potable water for hundreds of thousands of athletes and spectators over and above Beijing’s 17.5 million citizens. Not to mention the staggering amounts of H₂O required for scores of events both in and on the water. So to test drinking water and ground water, Yin Baoguo turned to IDEXX.

“The new Chinese drinking water standard requires testing for total coliforms and E. coli, as well as Cryptosporidium and Giardia” says Yin. “Using the IDEXX Colilert® Test Kit and the IDEXX Filta-Max xpress® system made it simple to test for both and allowed us to get the results in one day.”

For her part, Song Ying of the Beijing Wastewater Treatment Company also found using the Colilert/Quanti-Tray® system gave her testing department a huge advantage in terms of time to results and convenience. They were even able to reduce overtime. An unsung victory, perhaps—but one the people of the Beijing Wastewater Treatment Company are proud of all the same.

Speaking of setting high goals—then exceeding them—H₂O news recently spoke with Dr. Norman Neumann, program leader for the Environmental Microbiology Program at the Provincial Public Health Laboratory in Alberta, Canada.

Tell us a little about yourself and your laboratory.
I’m in charge of two very high-volume provincial public health labs in Calgary and Edmonton. Come summer, we test up to 1,200 water samples per day in Edmonton and 1,100 per day in Calgary. That volume is one of the biggest reasons why we switched to using the IDEXX Colilert® Test Kit.

What factored into that decision?
We did a very large method validation of the Colilert method compared to membrane filtration and found that Colilert results correlated well with membrane filtration, but the Colilert method had the advantage of huge labor savings and confirmed results within 24 hours. We also discovered it was much easier to train our technologists and laboratory assistants. Since we are a facility certified to ISO standards, working with a company that has achieved similar certification, like IDEXX, makes quality control easier.

So would you ever go back to membrane filtration?
It would be impossible to achieve our high testing volumes with another method or to have the efficiency, ease of use, cost-effectiveness and rapid turnaround times we currently experience. Thanks to all these factors, we’re able to drive down the cost per test and still offer quality and reliable results. I also like how dedicated IDEXX is to our lab; it makes me confident that we made the right choice. Yes, the products meet our needs, but so does the customer service and technical support. Large-volume testing, such as ours, requires rapid replenishment of supplies and IDEXX is always quick to deliver. Everyone is always very personable. It gives you a real sense of camaraderie.

This is the story of how a run-in with parasites turned into a career—and a calling.

In 1981, Hugh Tozer served in Benin in West Africa with the Peace Corps, during which time he became intimately acquainted, more than once, with the local microbial citizenry. The experience stuck with him and inspired him to become an engineer so that he could use that knowledge to improve the lives of others.

Fast forward 22 years. Tozer, an engineer with the Portland, Maine engineering firm Woodard & Curran, began to volunteer with Konbit Sante, a Maine-based nonprofit organization working in Cap-Haitien, Haiti. “And as Konbit Sante was doing its work to improve health care,” says Tozer, “it became apparent that water quality and quantity issues were severely affecting health care and the delivery of health care.”

Tozer’s initial project focused on the water supply for the Justinian Hospital. “The hospital had been supplied by the municipal system, but that fell into disuse years ago,” he says. “So they’d been relying on a bedrock well. It’s 320 feet deep and provides three gallons per minute of hard, almost brackish water. The water pipe ran through a medical waste pile to a storage tank and then to the hospital campus.”

Logistical issues made biological assays of the water impractical. Familiar with the Colilert® Test Kit from his work with Woodard & Curran, Tozer called yet another Maine-based entity: IDEXX Laboratories. Equipped with donated test kits and an IDEXX Quanti-Tray® system, Tozer sampled water throughout the hospital. “I found the well was clean in terms of bacteria, but the water was contaminated after the pipe ran through the waste pile to the storage tank,” he says. We were able to use Quanti-Tray to get a better understanding of the degree of contamination, not just positive or negative. The results helped us refine where work needed to focus: first step was to replace the water main between the well and reservoir.”

“Using the test kits, we could identify where they had a problem and look into where we might fix it,” Tozer continues. “And that’s how our work moved from the hospital to the wider community, including an orphanage, a feeding program and a hotel.”

“One of the most important messages I got from the whole experience is that simply understanding there is a problem allows people to respond,” Tozer says. And having access to easy-to-use testing technology goes a long way in such an environment. “I made sure to leave supplies for the technicians in the Justinian Hospital’s laboratory so they could run the tests themselves. There’s another organization doing work in Haiti called SOIL that works on sanitation issues, and I left them with extra IDEXX test kits as well. The simplicity of the test kits is ideal. That I was able to write down just a few sentences on how to conduct a test speaks to that.”

It’s not every day that a health department bests its own record for turnaround time. But that’s exactly what the Health Department Laboratory for Racine, Wisconsin, did, according to a paper published in Lake and Reservoir Management.¹

The paper was coauthored by Dr. Julie Kinzelman, laboratory director for the City of Racine Health Department Laboratory. In it, she reports how the health departments of Racine and Milwaukee teamed up for a two-year study on the efficacy of detecting E. coli using the IDEXX Colilert-18®/Quanti-Tray® system compared to a U.S. EPA-approved membrane filtration method.

The result?
Racine and Milwaukee slashed the time from sample collection to public notification by over 6 hours using IDEXX technology, with no significant difference from the results obtained using membrane filtration. With the Colilert-18/Quanti-Tray system, both health departments also reduced labor costs and training because they could use personnel with less technical expertise to monitor their Lake Michigan bathing beaches while still complying with the BEACH Act. Ultimately, the authors concluded that “IDEXX may be of interest to other agencies and communities who need to routinely monitor bathing beaches for public health.”

Doing business in central London is a mixed blessing for G.R. Micro Environmental Healthcare Limited. On the one hand, it’s an area rich with potential business. On the other hand, there’s ample competition. And space in such a densely populated urban setting is a precious commodity. G.R. Micro has found, however, that partnering with IDEXX has reaped them benefits on all three counts.

Since 1995, G.R. Micro has analyzed a wide spectrum of water samples, including drinking, industrial, recreational, health-care, and pharmaceutical waters. “The company began using the IDEXX Colilert-18® Test Kit about four years ago,” says Mark Hichens, director of environmental services. “And in that time, it has enabled G.R. Micro to retain profitability in a highly competitive analytical service industry.”

“With the Colilert-18 method,” says Hichens, “the reduced cost of labor required for both training and day-to-day sample throughput has proven to be hugely beneficial. It’s also freed up hands-on time, so we can concentrate on method development and providing customers with high-quality service.”

Last, but not least, he notes, “The simplicity and space savings matched our needs perfectly, not to mention the ongoing equipment savings. Few other new technologies offer all-round efficiency savings within the business.”