The parents of a baby girl who doctors believe was made seriously ill by contaminated water are urging Government to rigorously enforce regulations that require all household tanks to be cleaned every six years.

The American couple, whose two-year-old daughter is still recovering after contracting a rare lymph node infection in 2012, claim the Public Health (Water Storage) Regulations 1951 are “not enforced in any way” by the Department of Health, despite the risk to human health from dirty tank water.

They told The Royal Gazette they fear most landlords aren’t aware of the legal requirement to regularly clean tanks and that unsuspecting tenants could be exposing themselves, their children and their pets to dangerous drinking and bathing water.

The couple’s daughter had to have an MRI scan and a three-hour operation under general anaesthetic to have an infected lymph node the “size of a golf ball” removed from her neck a month before her first birthday. The infant also had to take medication which could damage her eyesight in the long-term.

The couple, who asked not to be named, say their child never drank tap water at the three-bedroomed property they rented for $4,400 a month in Smith’s, but they believe she was exposed to the disease-causing bacterium kansasii in her bath water and from having her teeth brushed.

“We had pure water delivered [for drinking],” said the father. “But the doctors determined that it could have been just that little bit of an amount, just from bath water and brushing teeth.”

Paediatrician Douglas Savino, from New York State, initially diagnosed the child with atypical mycobacterial cervical lymphadenitis and said in a statement shared with this newspaper that contaminated tank water was the “probable and likely cause”.

Another doctor, infectious diseases specialist Patricia DeLaMora, from the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, confirmed that diagnosis and said in a statement that it was proven when “cultures of the affected node taken during an open operative procedure grew mycobacterium kansasii”.

She added: “Contaminated drinking water is considered to be the main vector for transmission of this organism to humans.”

In a second statement, Dr DeLaMora wrote that the girl’s infection was “typically associated with ingestion and/or exposure to contaminated water. The water tank located in the [family’s] home did not meet hygiene standards, making it the logical source of [the child’s] infection.”

The couple say a third doctor, Jay Dolitzky, from ENT & Allergy Associates in Manhattan, told them that the likely cause of their daughter’s infection was contaminated water or milk. The child drank only formula milk at the time and it was never made with tap water.

According to the couple, their Bermudian landlady admitted to them after their daughter’s diagnosis that she could not remember having the tank cleaned at the house and that it could have been 30 years since it was done.

A Department of Health report shared with this newspaper shows that an analysis of the tap water at the house conducted by the Central Government Laboratory on February 19 last year found it was not fit for drinking and contained 16 different types of bacteria, including e-coli.

A local water supply company called in by the couple to clean the tank found a “significant build-up of organic and inorganic sediment”.

The company boss sent an e-mail describing the clean-up to the child’s father, in which he wrote: “Heaviest dosing of chlorine we’ve ever used — ended up spraying a solution on the walls and letting sit a while.

“While not clean in terms of volume of sediment, this is not uncommon to find in tanks that haven’t been cleaned in many years, nor the worst we’ve ever see[n]. While we haven’t seen the test results, sounds like the worst bacteriological issue we’ve seen yet.”

The couple lived in Bermuda as guest workers from 2009 to 2013 but have since returned to the US. They say the “ordeal” they have gone through has caused immense emotional distress, as well as loss of income and loss of friends on the Island, who have objected to their criticism of Bermuda’s system of collecting rain water for drinking and bathing.

The mother said: “We firmly and wholeheartedly believe that [our child] contracted this bacteria from swallowing a small amount of bath water — something that cannot be prevented, as anyone that has children would know. We wrongly assumed this water was safe.”

She described having to hold her daughter down while she was anaesthetised for the MRI and the surgery, adding: “To say this was traumatic would be a gross understatement.” One infected node was successfully removed from the little girl, but other smaller ones were too close to facial nerves and had to remain.

The child was immediately put on a daily regimen of four antibiotics, which were “not kid-friendly in any way”, according to her mother.

One medication could damage the infant’s eye nerves and she has had to have a series of regular eye tests, which are not available in Bermuda.

The woman said: “We really do want to make this public so it doesn’t happen to anyone else. [Our daughter] is still seeing the eye doctor to make sure there is no long-term damage to her eyes from the medications.

“Furthermore, we won’t know if any or all of the medication and/or the bacterial contamination will affect [our daughter] in the long run. We can only pray that it does not.”

The father said: “The day we found out it was the water, my wife was hysterically crying. She ended up having to quit her job to move home [to the US] to take care of our daughter.

“My wife ended up moving back [to the US] because the medication our daughter needed wasn’t available in the right potency in Bermuda.”

He said he eventually had to quit his job here to be with his family and that the stress of his daughter’s illness put an enormous strain on his marriage.

“It’s our child,” he said. “We don’t have anything against Bermuda but it was about our daughter. We don’t want anyone else to suffer like we have.”

Through their lawyer here, the couple have asked their former landlady to pay them $35,000 in damages or face legal action — but she has denied any liability and her lawyer has said she will vigorously defend any lawsuit.

The landlady’s property insurers, BF&M, have also rejected the claim that the tank water at the house was responsible for the child’s illness.

Asked to respond to the allegations made by the couple, the landlady told this newspaper: “At this point, there is no comment. This has been a matter that has been already taken care of with lawyers.”

The Department of Health did not respond to a request for comment for this story. It recommends that tanks are cleaned every five years — while the law requires it to be done every six years — and says water should be regularly disinfected to make it safe to drink.

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