SEWER GAS.

Waikato Times, Volume XLII, Issue 3424, 9 June 1894, Page 4

SEWER GAS.

Sewer gas has hitherto been looked upon as the most pestilential and noxious ofall.gases. It is Comfortable and re-assuring, therefore to find after all it is only a bogey.: of disease, and ; that its character has been foully maligned. Its smell is bad, and therefore it m saddled with all the maladies that could be twisted out of Greek nomenclature for the sake of fees. But Dr 3?etri, of Berlin, declares that he did not find a single organism in 100 litres of sewer gas taken from a cloaca reputedly poisonous in Berlin, and. in some ether specimens h« only discovered one bacterium and three molds, which, possibly, were themselves in, a collapsed state from too healthy an environment,: Also there is the case of Mr Laws of London. Ho experimented upon' the gas in an old sewer under 8t James' Park, which accommodates a rich neighbourhood. and should be particularly vile and virulent, arid yet he •only found a few germs, quite too itw.ocenfc to be stopped at: quarantine oii the way to the lungs or the arteries- It is now .scientific opinion that there are a million times more microbe dangers in the. atmosphere of a fashionable ball-room - than in a sewer.. Whether this accounts for the evils some people are eter-nally-seeing in dancing is a matter of opinion, , particularly for these people. But the sanitary engineer is not excused if' he leaves'streets squalid and drains foul, ; 3V.en admitting that the; gas of: the underground arteries is not as pestilential as it'has been represented. - The" scrubbing. brush' ,and , .'flushingbucket are still necessary!