A PLEA FOR FREE VENTILATION.

Northern Advocate, 19 January 1920, Page 2

A PLEA FOR FREE VENTILATION.

THE HARMFULNESS OF BREATHED AIR. For the past two weeks I have '■been discussing the harmfulness of the breathed or otherwise polluted air of badly-ventilated rooms, dwelling specially on the question as to how far such air is actually poisonous, and how far its devitalising tendencies should be regarded as due to our breath being charged with moisture and deprived of the natural stimulating properties of pure, fresh air. The centring of attention on one aspect of a case i s very liable to prevent that breath of view which is essential to dealing in a simple, commonsense way with the. fundamental problems of life; thus there i 3 a tendency to forget that ? besides the chemical and physical changes in breathed air, it may be charged with living particles (in other words, microbes) capable of causing disease and death. Comparative freedom from noxious bacteria is a very strong point in favour of a bright, sunny, airy room, as compared with a dark, close, and stuffy one—light and fresh air being the greatest foes of germ life. Pure air and sunlight are the constant allies of human health and strength ( just as the reverse conditions always tent to beget debility and disease, however insensible we may remain to the harm that is being done. IS SEWER-GAS DANGEROUS I shall now consider the concluding remark in the correspondent's letter with which I have been dealing. The passage i s as follows:— I read recently in a Health publication that it ig now "known" that "sewer-gas" is not poisonous. One is inclined to say, "Where is truth?" In this case it is safe to say that Truth is rather with the old authorities, who denounced sewer-gas as ! poisonous, than with those whom it may please to mak e the startling and paradoxical announcement that this unnatural atmosphere is harmless, in spite of the fact tnat it is always more or less repugnant to our senses. The world takes particular delight nowadays in any statement mad c in a striking and arresting way, to the effect that the truth lies in the reverse direttion of existing beliefs. Froude's whitewashing of Henry VIII. owed its welcome to the same spirit reads with amused interest the attempt t 0 vindicate sewer-gas and the apparent discomfiture of its detractors !

At this stage my readers will be inclined to exclaim, "Then you don't agree wih the assertion that sewergas is comparatively harmless." Of course, I don't. Sewer-air in general, if it gets into our houses, is associated directly or indirectly with very dang«'rou s and deadly possibilities; half the efforts of our expensive plumbing and other sanitary provisions arc quite rightly directed against keeping the subtle and insidious enemy out of our homes.

Where, then, is the Truth- Are the scientists and the magazines simply playing with us when they mfike the sensational announcement, not Poisonous." Not at all. The scientist merely announces what he has found to bg true in regard to a limited field in which he is conducting his investigations; and tho press, taking such statements out of their context, are apt to make them appear startling, revolutionary, and universal in their application. Up to about 20 years ago it was supposed tha the air in sewers was necessarily swarming with germs of disease, but la/ter investigation has shewn that this is not the case. The dampness of the linings and walls of sewer s tends to prevent the escape of microbes into the atmosphere, and therefore sewer-air may actually contain fewer germs than would b e present in the air of an ordinary room. However, this does not mean that it is safe for a city to have faulty sewers f or to allow bad drainage or scamped plumbing in houses. Al experience goes to show that colds, bronchitis, pneumonia, consumption, scarlatina, typhus, typhoid, diphtheria, erysipelas, cerebro-spinal meningitis ( and other deadly peste tend to become prevalent when we neglect proper sanitary precautions,, and disappear in proportion to the extent to which we get rid of overcrowding and filth and admit pure air and sunlight. AN AMERICAN OPINION. Having made this position clear, I think it will be safe for me to quote tho following from a book written 13 years ago by Professor Sedgwick, pf Boston, who has been regarded as the highest sanitary autuhority in America. What Professor Sedgwick says will at least satisfy my readers that the startling paragraphs appearing to-day regarding air and microbes! really deal with very old knowledge. The (fallowing is itaken from a chapter on "Some Popular Beliefs as to Certain Special and Peculiar Causes of Disease":— THE BELIEF IN DANGERS FROM SEWER-GAS. : Ther<' is reason to blieve that th< % dangers of sewer-gas have been very I ir'ueb exaggerated. There Is no , doubt, of course, that sewage is a de- , composing , liquid, and that it may, and ■ often does, contain the germs of spe--1 civic diseases. But, on the other

hand, the facts that workmen frequently spend much of their time in s"\vers with impunity, or work upon or above sewage in sewerage-purifica-tion works or on s<?wag e farms, seem to show that experience does not confirm the idea that the gases emanating from sewage are always or necessarily dangerous.

If ? now, we turn to stagnant sewage, such as might result from broken drains, or such a s commonly exists in cesspools, we may reasonably expect to find more dangerous and more concentrated gases. We may even suppose that these are posisonous, and that finding their way into human habitations, they are capable of producing sickness. There js no reason to doubt that some cases of sickness have, in fact, thus arisen, and to this extent the belief in sewer-gas as accav e of disease is probably sound. In such cases, however, the sickness may be expected to take either the form of sudden, sharp attacks, suggestive of poisoning, or else th c form of malaise and a genera! lowering of the vital resistance, lassitare, weakness, etc.

While thus freely granting the possible efficiency of sewer-gas as a general poison and depressant, we are very far from allowing the remaining and more popular form of the belief hi sewer-gas—namely, that it is capable of directly producing specific diseases, such as typhoid fever and diphtheria, which absolutely require for their genesis the introduction into the body of their own peculiar germs.