[Footnote:  Rural sanitation, by L. L. Lumsden, Public Health Bulletin No. 94, United States Public Health Service, p. 10.]

THE IMPORTANCE OF PURE AIR

Pure air is essential to good health.  It is not always easy to get in the crowded living and working conditions of cities.  There it is necessary to regulate these conditions by law, and factories and tenements are inspected to see that they are properly ventilated and not overcrowded.  In rural communities there is less excuse for bad air, and the responsibility for it rests more directly upon the individual, as illustrated on page 112, Chapter X.

BAD AIR AND THE SPREAD OF DISEASE

It might seem that it is nobody’s business but our own how we live in our homes or at our work.  But bad air lessens vitality and nurtures disease.  This reduces productive power.  Moreover, colds, influenza, and tuberculosis (of which more than a million people are constantly sick in the United States), all of which are nourished in bad air, may be spread by contact, or by food handled by those who are sick.  People who live in bad air at home mingle with others at church, in moving picture theaters, at school, in the courtroom, and in other public meeting places, which are themselves often poorly ventilated.  It is strange that court rooms, where justice is administered, schools where children are prepared for life, and churches where people worship, are so often badly ventilated.

Report on the following: 

Is your schoolroom well ventilated?  How do you know?  What effect does poor ventilation have upon your feelings and your work?

If the law requires school attendance, why should it also require good ventilation of the school?

If the ventilation of your school is not good, what may you do about it?  Who is responsible for it?

Observe and report upon the ventilation of the court rooms, moving picture theaters, churches, and other meeting places in your community.

PURE WATER AND HEALTH

Cities go to great expense to get an abundant pure-water supply.  It is of the greatest importance in community sanitation Impure water is one of the chief sources of typhoid fever and other diseases of the intestines.  About 400,000 persons have typhoid fever every year in the United States, and 30,000 are killed by it; and it is unnecessary.  We have from three to five times as much typhoid as many European countries have, and for no other reason than that we are negligent.

PURE FOOD AND HEALTH