STREET-WATERING IN SUMMER.

Evening Star, Issue 3434, 23 February 1874, Page 3

STREET-WATERING IN SUMMER.

A peculiar sanitary problem is started in the Melbourne ‘ Argus.’ Briefly it is this : oes watering the streets and slushing the open mains with 'water in the summer seas.m detrimentally affect the health of the citizens ? The intense heat of last summer in the northern hemisphere, says our contemporary, gave much rise to the discussion on this question of heat and moisture. ' nl y theoretically has the subject been discussed in England, but in America a practical turn has been given to the question, and whether right or wrong the arguments they adduce in support of it are deserving of consideration. Their theory appears to be that the comfort and the salubrity of the city depend to a large extent upon preventing an unnecessary waste of water in the streets in very hot weather ; and the problem they wish to have solved is whether the present profuse watering of the streets at mid-day and during the early afternoon, might not be arrested in all large cities with advantage ? In commenting on this question, our contemporary remarks; -Science, it has been observed, no less than common sense, teaches us that one of the first conditions of health is the avoidance of an atmosphere at once humid and hot. This is the peculiarity of tropical heat, and it is well « j^ u °f the great epidemic forms °f disease appear first in the tropics or near them. This is probably not so much due to ’tropical heat as to the excess of moisture taken up from the adjoining oceans, and from the excess of organic matter in the surrounding atmosphere Our latest accounts from the Northern Territory of South Australia should impress upon us the importance of accurately observing peculiar states of atmosphere, and of correctly dealing with them. Street watering is neither resorted to there, nor would it be required, if possible, either to put down the dust or to render the atmosphere more moist. On this subject a correspondent writes, on the 4th October, asfollows:—“The thermometer does not range as high as it does sometimes in Victoria or South Australia. There are no hot winds or dust-storms flying about to scorch the countenance, blind the eyes and stop the breath. But the air is heavy sultry and oppressive. The sun’s heat is felt as sooo as he is above the horizon.” The atmosphere ia, iu fact, overchanged with moisture : and the same is the case at Auckland, New Zealand, at the hottest seasons of the year. It may be said that the evaporation from the watering of the streets at mid-day is so rapid as not permanently to affect the atmosphere, the whole of the moisture disappearing in the space of fiveand twenty to thirty minutes. But that, if allowable, cuts two ways. It can hardly be of mu=h importance if so transient in its effects. However, it leaves behind it the vegetable and other organic matter decom pes.d in the gutters alongside the streets, whence the greater danger is likely to arise In blew V ork, the very numerous cases of sunstroke that occurred last jear were carried to the credit of this excessive watering of the streets, and its discontinuance was urgt'd as a means of lessening the number of these. In that there might have been something fanciful, and probably was, but we must accord to them the right of knowing their own sanitary condition best, and it must have been bad enough when they demanded the hermetic closing of all the city pumps, wells, and springs, and the stern enforcement of regulations against the use of a profusion of water iu the streets. As a mere scientific question, this is deserving of study here, although carried no further. °