FRESH AIR.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 317, 3 December 1910, Page 2

FRESH AIR.

f THE NECESSITY OF VENTILATION.

What would be considered a fairly large bedroom measures, say, 16 feet long by 15 feet wide and 12 feet high. Such a room contains very little more than enough air for the consumption of one adult for an hour. This is an accepted scientific fact. Without ventilation the air in ouch a room is exhausted in one hour, after which the occupant breathes in carbonic acid given off by his own lungs. Supposa that two persons occupy the room. The freshness of the air is then completely gone in half an hour, and for the rest of the night there is none but polluted air in the room. What about health in circumstances each as these ? What about cleanliness, with foul air entering the body by the lungs and at every pore ? Open windows are the only remedy. Those who sleep with windows tightly shut feci heavy, depressed, and unrefreshed after a night's rest, instead of rising with fresh energy to a new day, eyes bright and clear, and body and spirit alert and ready for the working hours before them. Ventilation is equally necessary in the living rooms. Windows and doors should be opened, so as to create a thorough draught,- atter every meal. Smells from below mean foul air'which is trying to escape, but finding no outlet mounts the stair in search of an open window. We can educate ourselves in the matter of fresh air. After a week or two of open windows, the system becomes very sensative to the presence of foul air. Not only the sense of smell becomes acute in detecting it, but the lungs protest against it by a laboured condition of breathing. To, persons accustomed to plenty qf ventilation ("which does not mean draught), the atmosphere of a crqwded room is not merely disagreeable but sensibly poisonous, This is as it should be. In too many of us the senses are dulled and blunt instead of being alert, acute, and keen, as Nature intended. They are the sentinels whose duty it is to warn us of the approach of anything harmful. But owing to our lassitude and inertia we allow them to become comparatively inactive.—"British Health Review."