The Effects of Impure Air
By Mrs. D. W. Rose
MLEBLANC states that the odor of the air at the top of the ventilator of a crowded room is of so noxious a character that it is dangerous to be exposed to it, even for a short time. The organic matter of respired air “contains minute cellular bodies named putrefaction cells, and in sick rooms it is associated with pus cells and other emanations of disease.” Tomlinson says: “If respired air be passed through pure water, the water soon exhibits all the phenomena of putrefactive fermentation.” There are scores of churches whose sextons, after keeping all means of ventilation closed during service, when the congregation has dispersed close the doors, turn the key, and leave the foul air safely housed, to be rebreathed when the worshipers shall return. Such places always have a disagreeable odor. The most thorough airing will scarcely be able to rid them of the offensive smell that has been produced by the decaying organic matter that permeates the breath. Who has not seen this loathsome vapor condensing on the walls and windows, and trickling down in fetid streams? “As much as forty-six per cent of organic matter has been found in plaster taken from the walls of a hospital ward in Paris.” Statistics tell us that it is not uncommon to find air in public assembly rooms, and even in dwellings, containing from ten to fifteen times the amount of carbonic acid found in pure air. Of this gas Tomlinson says: “It acts as a poison. If we attempt to inhale it, by putting the face over the edge of a beer vat, the nostrils and throat are irritated so strongly that the glottis closes, and inspiration becomes impossible.” One need remain but one-half hour in an unventilated room to have inhaled six hundred times of the foul and poisonous fluid; the blood will have carried it to every portion of the body, and the entire system will have become saturated. Who has not felt his mental and bodily energies deadened, and found himself unable to resist the chilliness which seizes him upon emerging from such a place? “Indeed, the effects are visible in the expression of the features; either a relaxed sallow paleness of the surface, or the hectic flush of fever is observable.” Headache often follows, which may last for hours and end in a bilious or nervous attack. In a report of the army sanitary commission, it is proved beyond question that the excessive mortality from consumption among the soldiers was due to lack of ventilation in the barracks; a reformation brought with it a material decrease in the number of cases of this malady. Fresh air is one of nature’s germicides, a great natural disinfectant. Yet some persons are as much afraid of fresh air as victims of hydrophobia are of fresh water. “I myself,” says Benjamin Franklin, “had formerly this prejudice, this aerophobia, as I now account it, and dreading the supposed dangerous effects of cool air, I considered it an enemy, and closed with extreme care every crevice in the rooms I inhabited. Experience has convinced me of my error. I now look upon fresh air as a friend. I even sleep with an open window.” In order to maintain a degree of purity of the air necessary to perfect health, Wilson and others insist that we must be supplied with three thousand cubic feet of pure air per capita per hour, and that a space of at least one thousand cubic feet should be allowed per capita in buildings permanently occupied. If gas is burned in the room, each jet requires the same provisions as are necessary for five persons. We inhale on an average twenty-six cubic inches of air (I wish I could say pure air) at a breath. Oxygen is food to our lungs, blood, and tissues, and should be as free from poison as any other food of the body. “We shun impurity in every form,” says Steele, “we dislike to wear the clothes of another, or to eat from the same dish; we shrink from contact with the filthy, and yet sitting in the same room, inhale their polluted breath.”—Mrs. D. W. Rose, in Good Housekeeping.