Prosecutors have decided against bringing any criminal charges over the deaths of four people in a legionnaires’ disease outbreak in west Edinburgh three years ago.
The Crown Office, Scotland’s prosecution authority, said it had proved impossible to identify the source of the bacterial outbreak, leaving it with insufficient evidence to take a person or company to court.
The outbreak caused alarm in the heavily built-up areas of Gorgie and Dalry after the first cases emerged in early June 2012. More than 1,000 people reported potential symptoms, and 92 cases were identified; 45 people were admitted to hospital, some of them critically ill.
One major site among four businesses that were placed under investigation as a possible source, the North British Distillery, shut its cooling towers as a precaution after the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) served it with an emergency improvement notice.
With four people dead, including builder Robert Air and several others with underlying health problems, it was Scotland’s worst outbreak in more than a decade.
The Crown Office said no decision had been made on whether to hold a fatal accident inquiry, a sheriff-led legal investigation designed to establish the cause and lessons of a death. It will now liaise with the families of the victims.
Gary Aitken, the head of the Crown Office’s health and safety division, said: “This was always going to be a difficult and complex investigation due to the number of potential sources in the Gorgie area, but we continued on in the hope that the necessary scientific evidence would come to light. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened.”
Alistair McNab, the HSE’s head of operations in Scotland, said the case was one of the most complex the organisation had undertaken in Scotland. The affected area had numerous factories and businesses, many with cooling towers and industrial air conditioning systems.
He said the HSE had warned at the time that it could prove impossible to trace the source.
“Legionnaires’ disease can have a long incubation period of up to 19 days, so by the time an outbreak is notified to HSE and other regulatory bodies, and sampling carried out on water systems, the bacteria levels may have changed or the source producing bacteria may have ceased operation,” he said.
“In addition, as a precautionary measure companies are encouraged to shock dose their cooling towers with chemicals, which again can prevent identifying the source.”
