Healthfulness of Sewage -Farms 133 



Objections to sewage-f arming. —^Objections have been 

 raised against sewage-farming on account of the possible 

 dangers to public health arising therefrom. It has been 

 urged that the dust particles and tiny drops of moisture 

 carried away by the wind from the sewage-irrigated 

 land may contain disease germs that may be thus brought 

 to the city. It has been urged likewise that the disease 

 germs may be carried away from the irrigated land by 

 flies and other insects that frequent it. It has been 

 asserted, furthermore, that there is great danger in using 

 the vegetables and other products raised on sewage- 

 farms, because the germs in the sewage readily cling 

 to the leaves, stems and roots of the plants. The cows 

 pasturing on the meadows, or consuming the grass and 

 root crops from the irrigated land are liable to come in 

 contact with the disease bacteria. 



Actual experience in sewage-irrigated districts has 

 failed, however, to confirm these fears. The very 

 considerable number of gardeners on the sewage-farms 

 near Paris and Berlin shpw no greater amount of disease 

 than the people in the city. The grass from the sewage- 

 irrigated meadows near Edinburgh have been used for 

 many years in large dairies as well as by owners of single 

 cows, yet there is no record of any outbreaks of sickness 

 that could be directly attributed to the consumption 

 of such crops. Individual cases of sickness may, how- 

 ever, have thus arisen in the past. If any serious danger 

 at all exists in this direction, it is the danger that a 

 portion of the sewage will escape unpurified into wells 

 or surface water used for drinking purposes, a danger 

 which sewage-irrigation shares with other methods. 



