Sewer-gas and its dangers : with an exposition of common defects in house drainage, and practical information relating to their remedy

Front matter

QO r pQ;.

A

Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School

Preface

records of the sorrow and suffering encountered, so far as they were the result of sewer-gas poisoning, were kept. The presence of the invisible and insidious enemy in the houses of those afflicted was found to be seldom realized. It was natural that inquiries should be made as to the means which sewer-gas had of entering a house, and whether it might not be shut out, or induced to go into the open air. Defects in house drains were noted as they were found, and means for remedying defects were sought out. In the search a system of drainage was discovered which seemed to promise relief. All these facts are presented in as plain and comprehensive a manner as possible, that those most in need of the benefits to be derived from their presentation may readily understand the subject. If there has been any doubt that sewer-gas is a dangerous enemy to health and happiness, it must be dispelled by the stern facts presented in this book. To breathe sewer-gas, much or little, in his own house or office, day after day, is a risk which no man can afford to take for himself or his family. It is to emphasize this point that so many cases of actual, deadly poisoning by sewer-gas are given. If they

PREFACE.

do not convince they certainly must set people to thinking and investigating, the result of which will inevitably be better house drainage and better health.

Thanks are due to Mr. W. F. Storey for permission to use much of this matter, which, in another form, has appeared in The Times in daily reports made by the writer during the past two years ; to Dr. Oscar C. DeWolf, Commissioner of Health, for encouragement and advice in this work ; to Prof. Walter S. Haines, of Rush Medical College, and to others who have furnished information relating to the subject in hand.

G. P. B.

Chicago, March 31, 1881.

Contents

CHAPTEK. PAGE.

I.— A City's Curse, - - - - 15

II. — An Apparent Cause of Diphtheria, - 31

Chapter I. A City's Curse

The greatest blessing of this life is good health ; the greatest misfortune, ill health. Without health, a man can not be happy, and hardly prosperous ; with a diseased organism, he is his own greatest enemy, and a promoter of unhappiness in others. A man's health is largely in his own hands, subject to the air he breathes and the food he eats. Of course, men and women must die sooner or later, but the number who live their allotted years, and finally yield to the exhaustion of old age, is surprisingly small. Of the 803 persons who died in Chicago during the month of September, 1880 — a month selected at random from the records of the health department — only thirty-six had reached the age of seventy years. Of the entire number, 328 — more than forty per cent. — died of diseases which mi^ht have been prevented. Parents mourn the loss of children, and young and old the death of friends, and, somehow, can not get rid of the idea that there is a kind of fatality in death, or that a cruelly-kind Providence has cut short the life of this one or that one ' ' for the best. " Some people look upon sickness as a scourge for their sins, and others affect to believe that it is often " constitutional,,, by which they are supposed to mean that incurable afflictions are inherited, or fastened upon themselves in some other doubtful way ; while, in fact, they may have simply tainted their blood and devitalized the tissues of their bodies by breathing foul air, or taken food or drink which disorganizes rather than builds up the system. If it is alarming that nearly half of the people of a great city die of diseases which might have been warded off, it is a more startling fact that 445, or more than half, of the 803 people who died in the month named above, in Chicago, were children under five years of age.

There is a popular belief that physicians have the power to cure most, if not all, diseases, and when a man is taken sick, his first impulse is to send for a doctor. If he recovers, the physician is given credit ; if he dies, the friends say that it was due to improper medical treatment. If people would only learn, and then profit by the knowledge acquired, that it is better and easier to prevent disease and physical disorganization than to cure and reorganize after the affliction, life would be prolonged, and death made easy and natural. The physician might then dispense with his drugs, and devote himself to the preservation of health, instead of its restoration.

A great many elements enter into the causes of preventable diseases. In a city there is apt to be tainted or adulterated food, especially for the poorer classes, who are compelled to live cheaply, and whose houses, too often, lack comfort and convenience. In some cities there is apt to be poor water, which, happily, is not the case in Chicago. Filthy streets give off exhalations which are nothing less than the breath of disease. Improper ventilation of houses, and especially of sleeping-rooms, in which people breathe an atmosphere soon saturated with poison, is a more direct and potent cause of disease and diminished vitality than most people imagine. Finally, and most important of all, is the influence and effect of the poisonous air which escapes from sewers. There is reason to believe that in great cities like Chicago sewer air, or, as it is commonly known, sewer-gas, is the source of more physical suffering, and the cause of more diseases, than any other one thing. If this is true, the contamination by sewer-gas of the air which people B l* breathe, is a calamity indeed, and that the statement is true there is no doubt.

Wherever there are sewers, it is certain that there will be sewer-gas. If confined within the sewer, or permitted to escape into the open air, it can do no harm. In the first instance, it is imprisoned and helpless ; in the second, it is robbed of its power by the oxygen of the atmosphere. It is only when it finds its way into houses, drives out pure air, and is unconsciously taken into the lungs, that it becomes the enemy of the human race. Sewer-gas is not often instantaneous in its effects, but it is none the less certain. It may be the source, or promoter, of all the so-called zymotic diseases. A zymotic disease is defined as "any epidemic, endemic, contagious, or sporadic affection which is produced by some morbific influence acting on the system like a ferment." This technical definition is not so comprehensible as the plain statement that zymotic diseases include typhoid, typhus, scarlet, cerebro-spinal and malarial fevers, small-pox, measles, diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, cholera morbus, cholera infantum, croup, diphtheria, whooping-cough, puerperal diseases, and some others. A prominent writer says : "If we look for the cause of the large mortality from zymotic diseases in our cities, we find it principally in sewer-gas poisoning. Other causes operate to swell the total, but to bad plumbing we mayattribute the prevalence of pythogenic pneumonia, peritonitis, inflammatory rheumatism, typhoid and malarial fevers, croup, diphtheria, and many kindred diseases, which are almost epidemic in all our large cities."

Sewer-gas does not always kill. It poisons the blood of once healthy men and women, and destroys, or cripples, their capacity for business or enjoyment. It robs men of ambition, and women of beauty. It paves the way for specific diseases which would otherwise never have sent strong men to bed for months. There are those in this city whose lives were imperiled by it, but who fled from its presence ; years have passed and the poison has not yet been driven out of their veins.

There is said to be a distinct, odorless and nonanalyzable element which has been denominated sewer-gas, and which is as deadly in its effects as sulphureted hydrogen. If this is true, it is seldom met with. The term sewer-gas is more commonly and properly applied to the pent-up foul odor which may be found in any sewer or its connections. It is easy to understand that this gas is laden or saturated with particles of decaying animal, vegetable and excrementitious matter, which finds its way into the sewer. If this gas is breathed into the lungs, thus laden with poison, the blood must of necessity be contaminated. Further than this, the air which escapes from the sewer ma}' bear with it the germs of contagious diseases, and deposit them where least expected. It is possible— it is probable — that the blood-poisoning resulting from the breathing of sewer - gas is due to chemical changes in organic matter which has been taken into the lungs. This may come from the sewer, catch - basins, drains, privy - vaults, or waste - pipes. Sewer - gas, or its equivalent, is generated in an out-door privy vault, but it comes so soon in contact with the surrounding atmosphere, that it is rendered comparatively harmless. The air which escapes from sewers into houses is dangerous because it is not diluted, nor disinfected, by pure air, and because its confinement increases its potency. If all sewers were open at the top throughout their entire length, there might be no danger from the exhalations, except possibly from the germs of contagion which may have been carried into the sewers by water used in bathing the bodies of the sick. But this danger could not be so great as that which to a limited extent attends the breathing of the atmosphere which has swept through a sick room, and which many people do unavoidably and with apparent impunity breathe. In some cities of Europe, sewage is conveyed away in open gutters, without serious discomfort or danger. In other cities there are open man - holes leading to the sewers, and the gases generated are allowed to pass off freely and without danger. Sewer -gas is to be feared when it insidiously and persistently finds entrance to houses, offices, or buildings of any description in which people live or work. There are some people who believe it can do no harm ; others know by sad experience that it is destructive of health and robs life of enjoyment, but they imagine that they are helpless against it. Again, there are many thousands suffering from its effects, and they are entirely ignorant of the fact. In mercy to this third class the warning note should be sounded, and for their especial benefit, as well as for those who know no remedy, the means for shutting sewer-gas out of houses, if there are any, ought to be made known in the fullest and widest possible sense.

No man would build his house over an open cesspool ; and yet, in a city where there are public sewers, houses are built over a hidden cesspool a thousand times more dangerous than one abo\e ground could be. Into it empty ten thousand drains, which in turn are connected by waste-pipes and soil-pipes with wash-basins, kitchen sinks, and water-closets. Into these are deposited the waste of human bodies and the liquid waste of kitchens, laundries, and lavatories. Through the waste-pipes of the house this liquid filth is conveyed directly to the street sewer, into which are also poured other liquid abominations, which often hold "in solution matter still more objectionable. Does any one need to be told that this must be the source of a gaseous exhalation, poisonous as well as foul ? The pipes which connect a house with the sewer may perforin their duty well enough as drains, but they are practically serviceable as ventilating shafts for the hidden cesspool, the sewer. A man may pity an unfortunate victim of small-pox, diphtheria, or contagious fever, but he would not consent to receive the one afflicted into his home at the risk of the lives of his own family ; but if there is danger from contagion by personal contact, there is also reason for alarm lest the germs, or specific poison, of disease drawn into the public sewer, and carried from one end of the city to another, may be borne into houses of distant neighborhoods through drains and waste-pipes on the wings of an invisible sewer - gas. Before and since the time of Martin Chuzzlewit men have undertaken to live in swamps and marshes in obedience to the demands of an apparent necessity. The swamp malaria prostrated the imaginary Chuzzlewit and his faithful companion as it has many others similarly situated. The sewer cesspool is not essentially different from the swamp, but ordinarily that for which the former is responsible is slower in action, though oftener fatal or more lasting in its effects.

There is nothing about which the people of a city seem to know so little as its sewerage. There is nothing relating to the comfort and healthy condition of a habitation with which any one of mature years should and might be more familiar. House drainage, an adjunct of sewerage, is next in importance to the construction of the four walls of a house. It is the last thing which an occupant considers. If waste water " runs off,11 he is satisfied. But it is not sufficient to know that the waste will be carried out of sight ; there should be no doubt that it reaches the sewer, and that there is no leaking or spilling along the way. There should be such appliances in and about the pipes as would prevent the return of sewer - gas to the rooms of a house, and this fact should be positively known. A gentleman who knows more about the effects of sewer-gas than the rules of grammar, wrote, recently, "Every precaution should be taken to keep it out, as we would a thief, and much more so, because he takes what we can replace, while sewer air robs us of that which nothing can restore."

It is an easy matter to shut sewer-gas out of a house, especially if some intelligent attention be given to the matter when the house is constructed. The trouble is, that houses are built over sewers, and connected with them with as much unconcern as though they were streams of pure water. Unfortunately, sewers^ and house-drains are out of sight. A man may easily settle the question whether decaying garbage in or about his premises is responsible for obnoxious smells, but he can not of his own knowledge say that they come from a defective drain or sewer. He can learn something of the architecture and mechanical construction of a house by observation, and say that his shall be built thus and so, but he can not so readily learn how a house should be drained, even if the thought ever occurred to him that house-drainage consisted of anything further than getting waste matter out of sight. He has, possibly, heard something about traps in pipes and drains, but does not know where to look for them, and very likely would not know their use when found. A plumber's advice and services are paid for, but often to no good end. At the close of the year the occupant foots up his medical and funeral expenses, and wonders why fate has dealt so hardly with him. There is a repetition of these experiences during the following year ; at length the house is sold, or bartered away for another, which may prove to be a better or a worse habitation.

The man who lives in rented houses has the advantage of a privilege to change his residence once a year, but he is continually getting into houses that were built to make money out of, and not to live in. These are apt to be deficient in everything except outside appearance ; it is merely an incidental circumstance that somebody is to occupy them. There is no part of a house in which imperfect work may so effectually escape detection as the drainage ; hence there is little good work in the construction of the drains. So long as the man who builds his own house does not know how sewage should be properly disposed of, it will have defective drainage, and he will be troubled by sewer-gas. So long as the tenant of a house is not as able, when he rents, to determine whether the drainage is properly constructed, as he is that the house itself is secure, commodious, and warm, those who have money to invest will continue to construct houses better adapted to ventilating the street sewers, than for occupation. A man might better put his family into a shed in which they would suffer from cold in Winter and heat in Summer, than into a marble-front mansion, the waste-pipe of whose kitchen sink is not securely trapped and ventilated ; better for a family to live on a house-top where poisonous gases are sure to be disinfected by pure air, than within the house, although it have all the conveniences which human ingenuity can devise, and yet have defective drains beneath it.

It is important that municipal authority should be exercised over the construction of house drains. A pretense is made of doing this in Chicago, but it is a hollow one. The supervision which many are led to believe is given is confined to a dingy office in the old rookery at the corner of Adams and La Salle streets, where so-called drain-layers and plumbers are licensed to ventilate street sewers into dwelling-houses and public-buildings. The city pays a number of "inspectors" to watch the construction of house drains, and report defects ; but their "inspection" goes no farther than to make a very "free hand" sketch of the plan of drainage prepared by the architect, or builder, which is filed away in a vault of the aforesaid rookery. The little that has been done in securing better house drainage must be credited to the Health Commissioner, Dr. DeWolf, whose special inspectors, charged with the duty of ferreting out the causes of preventable diseases, have found sewer-gas to be mainly responsible, and have, by their advice and directions, and sometimes by suits in court, secured the improvements necessary. This little is as "a drop in the bucket ; " it should be supplemented by the cooperation of the Department of Public Works, or, better still, the superintendence of the construction of house drains should be given to the Health Commissioner, and means placed at his disposal to cause all existing defective drains to be repaired.

The construction of house drains is now left almost exclusively to drain-layers and plumbers, who are permitted to do work to suit themselves alone. When completed, the work is so effectually concealed that no one could find out, if he desired to, whether it was well done or not. The result is, that competition has reduced the work to a sham, and those houses which do not have defective drainage are an exception. The "worst of it is, that the people themselves, who must suffer in consequence, do not realize this, and are so slow to learn the facts that the penalty of death, even, has been, and must be, paid, over and over again, for the ignorance.

All this finds confirmation in what Prof. C. A. Lindsley, of the Medical department of Yale College, has recently written. He says : ' ' By the commingling in the sewer of such immense quantities of matter in ever changing proportions and kinds, and in all stages of putrefaction, the sewer may be considered, in the language of the chemist, as a vast test tube of prodigious proportions, stretching its stupendous length beneath the surface of the highways and ramifying its branches into all our houses. The activities of the liquid tilth poured into it are not merely those of motion passing down a declivity, but they are activities of a widely different nature. Silently, persistently, yet energetically and inevitably, the laws of chemical action are set in operation, and among the products of the changes resulting from the contact with each other of such various matters are the formation of noxious vapors, recognized under the general term of sewer-gas. Now as sewer-gas is lighter than common air it Aoays upward as naturally as water flows downwards. The immediate consequence is that the pipes leading from the several apartments of the house described become the conduits by which the sewer-gas is conducted directly into those apartments, and sewer -gas is filth — often in the most dangerous form. And so our fellow citizen has failed of doing what he proposed, but instead has really provided admission for a far more dangerous form of filth than he had before, viz., the gaseous products of sewage putrefaction. * * * Thus it is quite evident that the sewers constructed for public use to afford to our citizens the means of removing out of and away from their houses the filth of housekeeping, may ignorantly be so used that, while they do secure a prompt and convenient removal of such filth, they do also inject, as it were, into the very midst of our homes a form of filth more dangerous than that removed, and so subtle and intangible that its presence is not even detected, and yet often so laden with the germs of disease that diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, and other fatal maladies are the sure event to those who dwell in such air-poisoned houses.

' ' Does not consistency demand that the authorities which have provided sewers to protect the people's health should also provide that said sewers shall not be a cause of danger to the people's health? And yet there is no law in Connecticut forbidding our fellow citizens to commit suicide, and take the lives of their families, or prohibiting landlords from jeopardizing the lives of their tenants through exposure to the fatal influence of the public sewers.

" It is a reproach to the intelligence of the civilization amidst which we live that some guard against this peril does not stand prominently upon the pages of our sanitary laws. If nothing be done by the authorized powers for the safety of those who are already in peril from their exposure to sewer - gases, surely it is a species of crime to permit property - owners through ignorance, or for any other reason, to go on unrestrainedly putting additional numbers of our fellow citizens in danger by any further connections of houses with the sewers without adopting the safeguards necessary for their protection."

Chapter II. An Apparent Cause Of Diphtheria

An essential element of sewer-gas is sulphureted hydrogen, a deadly poison. This is in itself a sufficient argument that there is danger in breathing sewer - gas ; but, as a man knows that what fire destroys can not be restored and will not insure his house until his neighbor's has been burned, argument heaped upon argument will not convince many people that sewer-gas is as destructive of life as fire of buildings, until the actual results are placed before them.

Diphtheria is one of the diseases which result from the breathing of sewer-gas ; it is a disease of the country, but it is making such ravages in cities as would cause excessive terror if due to yellow fever or cholera. According to the latest report of the National Board of Health, for the week ending March 19, diphtheria was the cause of more deaths in the United States — cou sumption and pneumonia alone excepted — than any other disease ; and the fatality was greatest in cities with underground drainage. Diphtheria has been classed as one of the filth diseases, that is, filth is regarded as an important factor in its propagation and spread. This disease may be imparted to an apparently healthy person by contagion, but undoubtedly with no serious results unless the blood has been already robbed of a portion of its vitality by some such agent as sewer-gas;

During the Summer of 1879 and the Winter of 1880, the writer visited a large number of dwelling - houses in Chicago — taken without any previous knowledge of their character or condition — and made careful examinations of their drainage. These inspections were confined to dwellings in wtich there had been recent sickness, or deaths, from certain zymotic diseases, especially diphtheria. The object was to determine definitely the relation, if any existed, between such diseases and sewer - gas. The plan was first conceived of visiting all houses in which there had been deaths from the causes named in a certain month. This was pursued for a few days, but as the number of cases was so large the territory was restricted to a single ward. Considerable difficulty was encountered at first, because many people did not like to admit a stranger into their houses unless he had the authority of the law, and, besides, they did not like the implied imputation that filth could be found on their premises ; it was difficult to make them believe that they were not necessarily responsible for defects in the drainage of their houses, and that it would be for their interest to have such defects, if they existed, brought to light. The assistance of Inspector Genung, of the Health department, whose official authority secured unrestricted privileges, was afterward offered by Dr. DeWolf, and the inspector assisted in nearly all the investigations here reported. Almost invariably it was insisted by people that there was no sewer-gas in their houses, and never had been, and yet when the doors were thrown open, the atmosphere within was often found to be tainted unmistakably with odors from the sewer. The occupants had become so accustomed to the sewer air that they could not distinguish it. In answer to questions they usually acknowledged that there were no traps in the waste-pipes leading from their kitchen sinks, or they failed to know what traps were or to understand their use. A woman who responded to a rap at the door of a frame house on South Jefferson street, in which there had been a recent death from diphtheria, said that the house was in a perfect condition so far as its drainage was concerned. She laughed at the idea that sewer - gas had ever found its way into her rooms ; but the warm air which sought relief through the

open door brought with it a very perceptible odor C of sewer -gas. The woman, who politely refused to permit an examination of the drains, had a sallow complexion ; there were dark rings under her eyes, a vacant look in the eyes themselves, and a listless expression in her face. She was plainly enough not well. There was good evidence that she was suffering from blood-poisoning. The same tell- tale symptoms were seen in the faces of other women in the house. The building was one of a class erected years ago, when they were needed in a hurry, and when plumbers and drain - layers had even fewer conscientious scruples than they have at the present time.

A two-story frame house at No. 681 South May street was found to be occupied by three families, one of which belonged to the landlady. The first floor front was the home of a Bohemian family named Wille. A few days before the visit to the house, Mr. and Mrs. Wille had lost a little girl two years old. A year previous, a little boy of five had been taken from them. This was soon after they moved into the house. Both of the children died of diphtheria. The boy was sick only three days ; the girl, nine. Two children were left — one a babe in the mother's arms. This child was far from being healthy, as eruptions on its face and a rattle in its throat indicated. The mother's countenance was not only expressive of deep despair, but colorless, except that there were the tell-tale dark rings under her eyes. She did not object to having an examination of the premises made. There were three rooms occupied by her family, and they were quite clean and neat. In the kitchen was a sink. This connected Avith the sewer through an intervening catch-basin. Into this basin two other kitchen sinks emptied. Mrs. Wille's kitchen was small, and the only bed-room the family had opened out of the kitchen. The bed was not more than twelve feet from the sink. If foul odors came from the waste-pipe, they would first fill the kitchen and then the bed - room. It would be possible and very probable that they should escape constantly during the night and find their way to the lungs of the family and be breathed over and over again without being detected. Mrs. Wille was questioned upon this point and replied : ' ' Oh, sir, those awful smells ! They bother us terribly, and especially in the morning, or after a storm." Xhe question was unnecessary. The outlet of the sink was covered by an inverted bowl, the only defense the poor woman had against odors whose source she had discovered, and which were to her exceedingly obnoxious.

Was this odor sewer - gas % As usual in houses of that class, there was found to be no trap in the pipe which connected the sink with the catch-basin

— the latter, an intercepting cess-pool between the house and the sewer, usually built directly under the house. (See plate IV.) The waste - pipe was no less than twenty -five feet in length, and the greater portion of it ran horizontally. Its inner surface was undoubtedly coated with the festering sediment of the waste which had been flowing through it for years. Not only was this constantly generating and giving off a poisonous gas — nothing more and nothing less than sewer -gas — but also the waste - pipe afforded a means of ventilation for the foul catch - basin, which had no other ventilation, directly into the kitchen. The condition of things is exactly represented in Plate III., the arrows indicating the course of the poisonous and offensive exhalation.