Citizens Careless With Tins And Bottles Are Potential Child-Maimers

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 45, 11 May 1948, Page 7

Citizens Careless With Tins And Bottles Are Potential Child-Maimers

(By the Department of Health)

Every year there are reports of feet cut from broken bottles. Not so long ago Auckland and Wellington Hospitals had a busy time stitching and mending the results of the crashing beer bottle. The person who throws a beer bottle about is no credit to our homes or schools. He deserves detection and a penalty. There’s another citizen who maims children with broken glass and jagged tins. The one who throws his rubbish into a vacant section, instead of keeping a rubbish tin and looking after it properly. All kinds of stuff is pitched over the fence—jagged crockery, glassware, wire ends, rusty tins. Soon the grass grows and conceals the danger. Along comes some children playing, and a foot or hand contacts the unseen menace. Not only does the rubbish throwing citizen endanger children; he also encourages mosquito and rat breeding—even if he avoids throwing foodstuffs, he gives a rat cover, and anything that holds water will allow mosquitoes to breed. If your child should come home with a gash of either limb, or hand or foot, from standing ,on broken glass, stop the bleeding by the firm pressure of a pad bandaged over the wound. If it’s a big gash and apparently a severe wound leave the cleansing and dressing to a doctor, who may think it requires stitching. Smaller wounds can be dressed at home. Cleanse the wound, after bleeding has stopped, with warm boiled soapy water, till you get all the dirt away. Flush the wound with cool boiled water or an antiseptic solution. Finally dab the surrounding skin with iodine and cover with a sterile dressing, secured with plaster or bandage. And draw the moral in a teachable moment—never throw glass about.