Medical and Dental Practices

Don’t underestimate the importance of ensuring the quality of your dental unit water. With patients and surgery staff regularly exposed to water from aerosols used during treatment, failure to ensure that dental unit water lines (DUWL) are clean can cause contamination, risk spreading infection to patients and dental workers and may be a breach of Health and Safety Guidelines.

The Health and Safety Commission’s requirements can be found in “The Control of Legionella Bacteria in Water Systems – Approved Code of Practice and Guidance”. The code of practice applies to all premises covered by the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, including dental surgeries. All dentists are required to conduct a statutory risk assessment in their practices and, to comply with their legal duties as employers, dentists must identify and assess sources of risk and implement a scheme for preventing and controlling that risk.

The aim is to ensure compliance with the Department of Health’s Health Technical Memorandum (HTM 01/05), which was introduced in 2009 as a response to emerging evidence around the effectiveness of decontamination in primary care dental practices.

All dental practices, both in the NHS and Private Sector, are required to register with the Care Quality Commission and meet its registration requirements as set out in the Memorandum.

In the UK, all doctors’ surgeries, medical centres, and other healthcare facilities must have a written scheme and a Legionella risk assessment to manage identified risks. This requirement is in line with the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Approved Code of Practice and Guidance document, known as ACOP L8. Additionally, the HSE’s L8 is supported by the Department of Health’s guidance document: Health Technical Memorandum 04-01, which addresses safe water in healthcare premises.