FILTRATION AND HEALTH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 19 September 1913, Page 4

FILTRATION AND HEALTH.

Investigations with regard ta the filtration of water are out by Mr Albert G&sch, an Austrian expert who is visiting Australia. Glutting to a reporter in Adelaide, the visitor remarked that many folk were under the impression that so long as water appeared to be clear and crystal it was gdod. That was a wrong idea, because the very element which often caused harm through drinking—disease microbes —were so small as to be invisible to the naked eye. The size of one such microbe was about one twenty-five-thousandth of an inch, so tlip,t it required to be>-magnified from 1000 to 4000 times before it .became visible. The great danger of harmful bacteria in water wag the rapidity with which they reproduced. Comparatively recently it had been discovered that bacteria belong to . the vegetable kingdom, and not, _ as hitherto thoiught,*to the animal kingdom. Water, when once frozen, might still be more dangerous, because the freezing, instead of killing the bacteria, made them resolve themselves into spores which had been likened, to the seed of a plant. Of all borne. After referring to the possibles'harmful effects of drinking tank water coming from roofs, Mr Gasch said he favoured candle-block filter systems. Indeed, In some .places boards of health autfeoritiea prohibited the use of any other method of filtering drinking water.