Have you ever been on a camping trip? Remember the problems in picking a good camp site? One of the first concerns was water. You needed to be near a spring or a stream, where the water was clear and suitable to drink after boiling. Another problem was disposal of waste materials. Other problems you probably had were how to preserve perishable foods and how to get rid of insects. A community faces many of the same problems you had on the camping trip. In a sense, a community is a large group of people living in the wilderness. The larger the community, the greater its sanitation problems.
We have lived under high standards of sanitation so long that we take them for granted. When you turn on a faucet or pump water from a well in your home, you except it to be safe to drink. When you go to the store or the bakery, you expect the food you buy to be clean and unadulterated. You don’t worry about sanitary conditions in dairies or the health and cleanliness of workers in canning factories. When you travel across the country, you give little thought to possible danger in drinking water from a system you know nothing about or in eating food in a strange restaurant. You depend entirely on the regulations of local and state health departments and on the enforcement of high standards of sanitation.
Sewage problems are solved with a scientifically constructed septic tank system or a city sewer system. When sewage empties from your house into the main, your individual problem is solved. Sewage then becomes a community problem. What happens to it? The community might dump it into a nearby river and solve the problem rather simply and with little cost. But what about people living downstream? They may depend on the same river for part of their water supply. Thus, sewage treatment and disposal becomes both a local and a state problem, involving close cooperation between the departments of health.
Factory waste presents another widespread sanitation problem. If a canning factory or a slaughterhouse dump wastes into a stream, the water is polluted for many miles. Acids, alkalies, and other factory chemical wastes may create an even more serious problem. The stream, which should be a community of aquatic plant and animal life, becomes a foul smelling health menace. You can see why problems of this kind go far beyond the control of a local health department.
Control of Contagious Disease
Not many years ago, we thought of a local health officer as the man who came to the house of a victim of a communicable disease with a sign in one hand and hammer and tacks in the other. Such quarantine sign as “MEASLES” or “WHOOPING COUGH” warned visitors not to enter the house and members of the family not leave. At one time, the obligation of the health department ended here, but now public health focuses more attention on conditions, which might have led to the contraction of the disease. This new approach has made quarantine signs obsolete in many places. Cooperation with the medical profession in the immunization program has been a vital factor in reducing the number of cases and the severity of infectious disease.
Sanitary regulations have reduced the number of infectious diseases greatly. Reports of doctors enable the health departments to caution the public about outbreaks and possible epidemics. Educational programs help the individual safeguard his own health.
We have lived under high standards of sanitation so long that we take them for granted. When you turn on a faucet or pump water from a well in your home, you except it to be safe to drink. When you go to the store or the bakery, you expect the food you buy to be clean and unadulterated. You don’t worry about sanitary conditions in dairies or the health and cleanliness of workers in canning factories. When you travel across the country, you give little thought to possible danger in drinking water from a system you know nothing about or in eating food in a strange restaurant. You depend entirely on the regulations of local and state health departments and on the enforcement of high standards of sanitation.
Sewage problems are solved with a scientifically constructed septic tank system or a city sewer system. When sewage empties from your house into the main, your individual problem is solved. Sewage then becomes a community problem. What happens to it? The community might dump it into a nearby river and solve the problem rather simply and with little cost. But what about people living downstream? They may depend on the same river for part of their water supply. Thus, sewage treatment and disposal becomes both a local and a state problem, involving close cooperation between the departments of health.
Factory waste presents another widespread sanitation problem. If a canning factory or a slaughterhouse dump wastes into a stream, the water is polluted for many miles. Acids, alkalies, and other factory chemical wastes may create an even more serious problem. The stream, which should be a community of aquatic plant and animal life, becomes a foul smelling health menace. You can see why problems of this kind go far beyond the control of a local health department.
Control of Contagious Disease
Not many years ago, we thought of a local health officer as the man who came to the house of a victim of a communicable disease with a sign in one hand and hammer and tacks in the other. Such quarantine sign as “MEASLES” or “WHOOPING COUGH” warned visitors not to enter the house and members of the family not leave. At one time, the obligation of the health department ended here, but now public health focuses more attention on conditions, which might have led to the contraction of the disease. This new approach has made quarantine signs obsolete in many places. Cooperation with the medical profession in the immunization program has been a vital factor in reducing the number of cases and the severity of infectious disease.
Sanitary regulations have reduced the number of infectious diseases greatly. Reports of doctors enable the health departments to caution the public about outbreaks and possible epidemics. Educational programs help the individual safeguard his own health.
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