Anchorage Daily News

An Anchorage woman who works in a laundry room at Fort Richardson has been hospitalized with an illness that doctors have identified as Legionnaires’ disease, a form of pneumonia, an Army spokesman reported Thursday.

Legionella bacteria infect the lungs, producing such symptoms as fever, chills, muscle aches and shortening of breath. The organism is found in warm water environments around the world.

Legionnaires’ disease does not spread from person to person, and only one case has been identified in Anchorage so far, according to Dr. Joe McLaughlin, the state epidemiologist.

“It’s unclear where the patient contracted the illness,” McLaughlin said. “It could have been from her own home. It could have been from her work site.”

Officials are withholding her name and details about her condition — apart from noting that she is a middle-aged civilian — in accordance with federal privacy laws.

The Fort Richardson Quartermaster Laundry where she worked will remain closed until Monday for water testing and equipment cleaning, according to Bob Hall, the garrison’s public information officer.

“They took some samples from two areas and sent them down to a lab in California,” Hall said. “We’ll get the results back next week.” Authorities also spoke with the woman’s co-workers and urged anyone with similar symptoms to see a doctor.

Between 8,000 and 18,000 people are hospitalized with Legionnaires’ disease in the United States each year, according to a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet posted on the CDC Web site. Up to 30 percent of cases are fatal.

The disease is most common in summer in warm-water climates, and for that reason rarely occurs in Alaska, McLaughlin said. People contract the disease when they breathe in a vapor contaminated with the bacteria.

But the legionella bacteria itself is commonplace, McLaughlin added. Other Alaskans who don’t get sick from it may well harbor the bacteria in their shower stalls or hot tubs. Persons most at risk for developing the disease are older, or people who smoke, or those with weakened immune systems.

In May a 45-year-old oil platform worker in Alaska contracted a case of Legionnaires’ disease that left him hospitalized in California for nearly two months, according to a report by the Alaska Section of Epidemiology.

Find George Bryson online at adn.com/contact/gbryson or call 257-4318.

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