CORNELL UNIVERSITY AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION THE FOLLOWING BULLETINS AND CIRCULARS ARE AVAILABLE FOR DISTRIBUTION TO THOSE RESIDENTS OF NEW YORK STATE WHO MAY DESIRE THEM The Cornell Reading-Courses PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY W. A. STOCKING, Jr., Acting Director A. R. MANN, General Editor COURSE FOR THE FARM HOME, MARTHA VAN RENSSELAER, Supervisor The purpose of this lesson is to suggest to persons in country homes better methods of disposing of household wastes than by means of the slop-pail and the outdoor privy. These new methods of sewage disposal are recommended to the farmer because it is hoped that they offer the following advantages: 1. They should make conditions much easier for every one in the home, especially for the housewife. 2. They are adapted to apparatus which is kept in order by about one tenth as much work as the old ways require, and this small amount of work will be not nearly so disagreeable as that now generally necessary. 3. They are more sanitary than the old methods, preventing the possible spread of disease by flies or by the contamination of drinking water. 4. They are easy to understand, are practicable, and are reasonable in price. 5. The different plans suggested cover every type of conditions usually met with in average country homes. Household tasks occupy the greater part of the country woman's time. They should be made as agreeable as possible and should be conducted under sanitary conditions. The emptying of the slop-pail is a disagreeable task little appreciated by those who do not have to do it. Furthermore, careless disposal of kitchen wastes will create unpleasant and unsanitary conditions near the house. Every home should therefore have in the kitchen a sink connected to a sanitary disposal system. There is no need to delay installing a sink until the time when a complete water system can be put in. A sink and a drain are cheaper than a water 1 system, and farm women should not be permitted to be for years without such conveniences even though fresh water has to be carried in pails. A kitchen sink and a sanitary system for the disposal of waste should first be installed; a pump at the sink is the next essential; and a furnace, a bathroom, and a complete water system should follow whenever possible. The farmer should not wait for the furnace before installing a sink. If the house is one that is cold at night, the sink trap should be put in the cellar and boxed with boards, and the box should be filled with sawdust. The cleaning of an ordinary outdoor privy is an unpleasant and unsanitary task. The care of a good earth closet is not quite so unpleasant nor so unsanitary, but in either case the disposal of the contents of the vault, box, or pail is not easy if all danger of disease is to be avoided. An arrangement consisting of a sink, a direct closet, a septic tank, and an underground purifying tile, as shown in plans B and C, a complete plumbing system as in Plan F or Plan G, or a direct closet and a chemical tank as in Plan E, is better than the earth closet. It is not necessary to wait for a furnace and a complete water system before installing equipment that is better than the isolated outdoor-closet arrangement. Such equipment as is shown in plans B, C, D, or E may be built as part of the house and reached without going out of doors. The isolated outdoor closet is frequently the indirect cause of sickness. It is often so cold or so public that many persons do not use it as frequently as they should. Wastes retained too long in the body tend to cause sickness. The ordinary privy is often the direct means of spreading diseases such as typhoid fever, dysentery, diarrhea, or summer complaint, and the hookworm disease of the warm southern States. In all these cases the germs of the disease are contained in the natural wastes of the body. Persons who are ill with any one of these diseases may give off countless millions of germs every day, while some persons who feel entirely well have been found to pass from their systems vast numbers of germs of some of these diseases, the most dangerous being typhoid fever. If flies have access to the contents of the privy, germs will be carried on their legs and bodies; one investigator found over four million typhoid germs on four flies. Experiments have proved that wherever these flies crawl they leave a trail of disease germs: if they crawl on cake, the germs are left there; if on a baby's rattle, the germs go into the stomach of the child. Since the flies eat the wastes in the open privy, they take disease germs into their own bodies and give them off later in the flyspecks about the house. Often Another way in which disease is spread from privies is by water. surface leakage from unsanitary privies is carried by the rains into streams, wells, and springs. This is proved by state records which show that outbreaks of typhoid fever in the country frequently come after heavy rainstorms. In many cases underground leakage from unsanitary privies is not purified by the soil before it has proved harmful. Soil that is fine-grained and fresh will probably purify sewage in one hundred feet, but it will not do so always. If kept constantly saturated with sewage, even fine soil will in time fail to act as a purifier. It may become foul for two hundred feet or more from the closet. Coarse-grained soils do not purify so well as do fine soils, while in limestone regions water may run underground in streams for miles, unfiltered and unpurified. This whole subject of the probability of the spread of pollution to wells is admirably discussed under the heading "Safety distance,” in a bulletin known as Water-Supply Paper 255, published by the United States Geological Survey at Washington, D. C., under the title "Underground Waters for Farm Use," by Myron L. Fuller. The bulletin is for free distribution. The following extract is taken from this bulletin: By safety distance" is meant the distance from a source of pollution at which a well may be sunk with a fair degree of safety. Some writers have spoken of a "cone of safety," by which is meant an inverted conical section of earth with its apex at the bottom of the well and its base a circle of some fixed radius on the surface. The radius taken by some is the depth of the well, by others twice the depth of the well, but such limits are usually fixed without taking into consideration the nature of ground-water movements or the character of the passages in which it moves. The distance of safety also depends to a considerable degree on the quantity and concentration of the pollution entering the ground water. Where coming from the surface the amount is commonly not large, but where entering at a considerable depth, as from cesspools sunk in limestone or in porous sands which also supply water to wells, it may reach the water stratum almost undiluted. It follows that no absolute radius can be laid down, each case demanding individual consideration. Certain generalizations, however, may be made as to conditions in materials of different types and under different topographic conditions, some of which are indicated below. " Clay and till. In ordinary clay and in the pebbly or bowlder clay known as 'till " the water circulates in part by general seepage through the mass, in part through relatively thin sandy layers, and in part along more or less open but irregular tubular passages. Seepage through the body of the clay or till is very slow and polluting matter is rarely carried for any great lateral distance; 100 feet from the nearest source of pollution may perhaps be regarded as a safe limit. The clay offers even more resistance to the passage of water directly downward, a 5-foot bed as a rule effectively shutting off polluting matter from the underlying water beds, unless such matter obtains access along the break made in sinking a well or other excavation. When the water follows sandy layers the movement, though much faster than in uniform clay, is nevertheless not very rapid, rarely exceeding a few feet per day, and pollution does not often extend much over 150 feet, 200 feet usually being a safe distance. In open passages movement is much more rapid, and may amount to several hundred feet a day in extreme cases. Under such conditions there is no purification and relatively little dilution, and if the passage discharges into a well dangerous contamination may result. In a thickly inhabited region a well depending for its supply on passages of this nature is never safe. Sand.- A bed of sand is among the safer water beds. Being of an incoherent nature, the material rarely contains open passages, the water circulating in general by a slow movement among the grains. The rate, though sometimes amounting to 50 feet or more a day, is usually under 5 feet and may be under I foot. A well 200 feet from the nearest point of pollution is probably safe in fine and medium sands, but in coarse sands and gravel a much greater distance may be essential. |