Portugal’s worst outbreak of Legionella which had its epicenter in the municipality of Vila Franca de Xira, near Lisbon has been traced to a cooling tower at a fertiliser factory.
The management of Adubos de Portugal Fertilizantes may now be prosecuted as a report has been sent to the prosecutor who will see if any environmental crime has been committed.
The outbreak of Legionella caused 336 people to be hospitalised, ten of whom have died.
Samples were taken shortly after people started to fall ill. The test results are now back and show that the main suspects, the fertiliser cooling towers, were indeed to blame.
"There is a similarity between the Legionella found in the cooling towers and the Legionella bacterium detected in patients,” said the president of the National Institute of Health, Dr. Ricardo Jorge.
The Minister for the Environment, Jorge Moreira da Silva announced that the data confirming the similarity of the bacteria found in the cooling tower and the type that caused the infection of hundreds of patients will be forwarded to the prosecutor
The minister named the fertiliser company even though any judicial proceedings are secret. This was the stance last Friday when reporters tried to question the leaders of the Legionella task force on the origin of the outbreak.
In a statement sent to newsrooms today, the health department said that it could now rule out any fears that the contamination had come from water, large shopping centers or air-conditioning systems.
This news rules out two nearby factories that had been under suspicion and which now have been exonerated, Central de Cervejas and Solvay.
Solvay issued a statement in which, apart from revealing that his factory is "operating normally," clarifies that its management had asked for an independent analysis of its cooling towers to be made and that there was an "absolute absence of Legionella in all samples."