The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-09-12
BY WILLIAM BRADY, M. D. POPULAR MIsCONCEPTIONs

One misconception widespread among the public and still held by certain physicians and even public health administrators is that dis ease germs may travel. in the air. Whatever our predecessors may have imagined about the epidemicS they had in the days of shotgun quarantine against yellow fever, leprosy and isolated pest houses" against other diseases, no 1ntellis gent physician or health officer to- day harbors that quaint fancy. Even in the operating room, where in the Listeriar era the air was kept con. stantly filled with Q spray of car- bolic acid solution while the opera. ton was under way, no precautiosi is taken in regard to germs in the air further than the effort to keep down dust. It is this misconception o fair-borne infection or the imag- ined breathing in of germs that float in the air, that keeps alive in benighted communities the sorry rite of fu1nigating after contagious disease, a rite which in effect B simply a racket.
 A 'mid-western reader makes . pertinent query:
 This Is 6 question of the health of my family against $S0. Please give me your opinion about the furnigation of house where no traps have been used in the drains of sink, laundry, bathroom, lavatory or toilet, the drain pipes opening directly into 6 septic tank. We have been tOld".'
 If you're sure. you have Ben, brother, please throw him in the septic tank where he belongs.
 have been told 1t would be
 very dangerous to move into the
 house without fumigating. The
 firm that does fiimigating looked
 1t over and said 1t will cost $30.
 We are having the plumbing !,
 Overhauled and traps put in,
 but we'd rather spend $3O for
 fumigating than perhaps have
 to spend many times more than
 that for doctor bills.
 I hope neither the racketeers nor the medical politicians who sanc- ton the racket will take it amiss, and who cares if they do, when I assure this reader and all others who may have similar problems, that So far as health and hygiene are concerned 1t makes no difference whether the drain pipes have traps, and 1t would be wretched waste of good nancy to fumigate in any cir constance.
 Fumigation by experts is Q valu- able method of ridding buildings or the holds of ships of rats which may be disease carriers. It is an effi- cient method of eradicating bed- bugs from 8 room. Ftlmigation has other practical uses, but by no stretch of reason or scientific knowledge can it be justified as a means of removing disease germs or disease virus from the air or the environment. Incidentally the fumigants chiefly used in public health work hydhocyanic acid gas and cyanogen, formaldehyle vo- DOT, sulfur dioxide, carbon disulfide, chlorine, etc., although poisonous to vermin, insects, rodents, larvoe and other higher forms of life, have little or no germicidal power in the form of vapor in the air.
 If were going to move into the house the realer describes, I'd want the place to have an ordinary soap and water nousecleaning, and If necessary walls or woodwork too grossly solled freshly papered or painted, and then give the house an airing for a day or two. and then I'd move in. I wouldn't mind if the late occupant had c complication Of leprosy. tuberculosis. syphilis, cancer, plague, cholera and the pip as long as the sellow EefEained from