Health Notes

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 789, 9 October 1929, Page 16

Health Notes

CLEAN Y.ARDS IMPORTANT DANGER FROM GARBAGE BREEDING PLACE OF DISEASE (Contributed by the Department of Health.) One of the first essentials of the development of good health in the keeping of a proper kind of home is the satisfactory disposal of waste products known as garbage. A house with a yard around it has advantages. It Improves the appearance of the home, affords a place for the children to play and a garden space providing a supply of fresh vegetables and flowers. Everyone should take a pride in keeping the yard and surroundings as sanitary as possible, for often the dirty back yard, the unweeded garden, “grown rank and gone to seed” indicates undesirable sanitary conditions. If the busy housewife keeps a home in a clean and healthy state it behoves the husband to see that the surroundings are also kept clean and orderlv, though it may mean an occasional absence from his favourite bowling green, golf course, cricket ground, or tennis court on some Saturday afternoon. The physical effort will prove very beneficial to him, and the pleasure of seeing some tangible results of his muscular endeavours should be sufficient compensation. Ordinarily the most common class of nuisance met with in yards is the garbage heap. This garbage heap may become a real menace to health and order and tidiness as it begins to ferment and decay. If wholly composed of ashes it would not be so great a nuisance, but even then the dispersal of ashes by the wind would be no slight inconvenience and annoyance. The heap always contains injurious substances such as bones and scraps of meat, vegetable peelings and rotten vegetables, oyster shells, old and filthy rags, pieces of carpets, mats, sweepings from the floor, empty cans, and sometimes manure. HARMFUL GERMS Once this mess is thoroughly moistened by rain and warmed by the hot sun, it develops very unpleasant and objectionable qualities. It breeds flies by tbe ten thousand which go everywhere, even *to the milk and bread and butter on the table, carrying along with them upon their bodies, and less minute quantities of this abominable concoction and millions of harmful germs. In properly-con-ducted houses this garbage heap is not present, because it is not necessary. The most injurious parts, such as wastes from the table, like meat scraps, bones and vegetable peelings, should be burned. Another good plan is to place garbage in covered metallic containers, which make the contents inaccessible to dogs and other animals, and do not permit the breeding of flies. It is preferable to wrap all garbage in paper before it is deposited in the container. This keeps the cans clean and prevents rapid fermentation in 1 summer. Garbage cans should be | thoroughly scoured from time to time. I Certain waste products can also be ; buried in the garden, thereby enrich- | ing the soil. Accumulating rubbish also creates I a fire hazard and affords an opporj tunity in certain localities for mosj quito breeding in tin cans and other | discarded receptacles that become ! filled with rain water and house the j insect larvae and pupae until maturity, j Ashes and dust blown about by the | wind irritate eyes, nose and throat | and predispose to bacterial infection.