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The Flint River is shown in this Flint Journal file photo.
(Jake May | MLive.com)
FLINT, MI -- The Flint water system is the likely source of a Legionnaires' outbreak that killed 12 people in 2014 and 2015, an expert on the disease says in a new affidavit filed with state health regulators.
Dr. Janet Stout's statement was included in more than 100 pages of documents filed by McLaren-Flint hospital with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services on Friday, March 10.
In a February, DHHS ordered McLaren to turn over information related to cases of Legionnaires' and declared the hospital's water system "a nuisance, unsanitary condition or cause of illness" -- apparently the first time the state has issued such a order to a hospital.
McLaren's response, including Stout's affidavit, calls the state's "singular focus" on the hospital as the prime driver of the area's explosion in Legionnaires' cases "unwarranted, unjustified and difficult to reconcile."
"(It) is my opinion to a reasonable degree of probability that the source water change and the subsequent management of the municipal water system caused conditions to develop within the municipal water distribution system that promoted Legionella growth and dispersion, amplification, and the significant increases in cases of Legionnaires' disease in Genesee County in 2014 and 2015," Stout's affidavit says.
"The dramatic increase in the incidence of Legionnaires' ... would not have occurred without the source water change."
While being run by a state-appointed emergency manager, Flint changed its water source to the Flint River in April 2014, and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has said it failed to require proper treatment of the water.
River water continued to be used until October 2015, just before Flint's water system was federally recognized as a the source of a health emergency.
MLive-The Flint Journal could not immediately reach representatives of DHHS for comment on McLaren's filings Friday, but the agency has said previously that the hospital has provided "insufficient response" to past requests for information and identified it as home to the "largest healthcare-associated Legionnaires' outbreak known in the U.S."
Chad M. Grant, president and chief executive officer of McLaren-Flint, included the affidavits and other documents in a response letter to DHHS Director Nick Lyon.
Grant's letter contests claims made by Lyon and challenges some requirements in the order DHHS issued under the Public Health Code last month.
In addition to the affidavit of Stout, who has authored or co-authored more than 100 scientific papers on Legionella bacteria, McLaren filed affidavits from J. David Krause, director of Forensic Analytical Consulting Services, and Dr. Hung K. Cheung, a doctor specializing in environmental and occupational medicine.
Krause's statement says in part that DHHS' own reports "indicate that the Legionnaires' disease outbreaks in 2014 and 2015 were countywide events not limited to a single point source."
Cheung's affidavit says "there is no reliable evidence to support the conclusion" that Legionella found in a water sample at McLaren existed only in the hospital's water system.
The reason for the Legionnaires outbreak here has been a subject of debate and study since 2014. During the outbreak, 78 patients contracted the disease, and 12 more died from it during the two-year period.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered the first genetic links between city water and three patients diagnosed with Legionnaires' disease in Genesee County late last year.
Although the matching water sample came from McLaren, one of the three patients had no contact with the hospital, raising questions about whether Legionella was widespread in the community.