FUMIGATION OF SHIPS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19220, 8 January 1926, Page 11

FUMIGATION OF SHIPS.

EXPENSIVE PRECAUTIONS. THIRTY POUNDS TO KILL A RAT. The port medical officer of Plymouth, Dr. G. A. Borthwick, ir: introducing a discussion on the disinfection of ships at a meeting of the Royal Sanitary Institute at Plymouth, said that during the past twelve months he had collected figures of fumigation of large passenger ships going regularly to America from nonplague infected ports of Europe, and found that 22 vessels, with a registered ton-' nage cif 2126,406 and approximately 22,640,600 cubic feet of hold space, were fumigated with cyanide and cyanogen chloride at an estimated cost of £6792, and that the number of rats destroyed was 234.

It would appear that each rat cost £3O to kill by fumigation by that method. He was doubtful whether routine periodical fumigations in non-plague infectedj ships were justified, or whether the usual ( rat precautions—tho proper use of guards on Tines and hawsers, and the rat-proofing of vessels, wire gauze on galleys, etc.,, where food was kept, and the employment of rat-catchers on board ship, would, not prove more efficacious and certainly' less expensive.