气体CASUALTIES.

气体CASUALTIES.

The current fatalities attributable to gas, in fires, explosions, and asphyxiations, cannot have failed to impress the careful student of the news of the day with wonder that so great a danger is still so lightly regarded by the public, and that anything so fatal as a fluid which kills or puts life and property in jeopardy even before its presence is recognised needs much better regulation than illuminating gas has yet received. Carburetted water gas is, without doubt, the most dangerous public nuisance with which those charged with responsibility for the public health and the safeguarding of property have to deal. Its fire hazard has been pointed out by the National Board of Fire Underwriters, and the sanitarians have begun to realise that the presence of carbon monoxide in the air of living and sleeping rooms is many times more dangerous than arsenical wall paper of antiseptic additions to food products. It is because gas is so great a public and private convenience that there exists a disposition to dismiss from considering its obvious dangers. This is not likely to be long operative in diverting attention from the grim fact that gas, as distributed in cities, is in the highest degree dangerous to life and property, and that the facility with which it may be used for lethal purposes more urgently demands its regulation by law than carbolic acid, or even arsenic.—N. Y. Times.

The current fatalities attributable to gas, in fires, explosions, and asphyxiations, cannot have failed to impress the careful student of the news of the day with wonder that so great a danger is still so lightly regarded by the public, and that anything so fatal as a fluid which kills or puts life and property in jeopardy even before its presence is recognised needs much better regulation than illuminating gas has yet received. Carburetted water gas is, without doubt, the most dangerous public nuisance with which those charged with responsibility for the public health and the safeguarding of property have to deal. Its fire hazard has been pointed out by the National Board of Fire Underwriters, and the sanitarians have begun to realise that the presence of carbon monoxide in the air of living and sleeping rooms is many times more dangerous than arsenical wall paper of antiseptic additions to food products. It is because gas is so great a public and private convenience that there exists a disposition to dismiss from considering its obvious dangers. This is not likely to be long operative in diverting attention from the grim fact that gas, as distributed in cities, is in the highest degree dangerous to life and property, and that the facility with which it may be used for lethal purposes more urgently demands its regulation by law than carbolic acid, or even arsenic.—N. Y. Times.