Health factors in the home

Health Factors In The Home

If Ben Franklin were living today, he might well urge “costly thy house as thy purse can buy”. This is merely to say that a good home is worth what it costs. What you can afford to spend, you should spend; for the good home pays dividends far beyond its value in shelter. The enjoyment of the family and community living, the pleasure of gracious entertaining, and sheer physical comfort are but a few examples of the benefits to be gained from life in a superior dwelling.

For the sake of comfort

The good home goes a step further by providing comfort as well as protection. Thus does man strive to alter his environment rather than to adapt to it. The ideal house can be readily warmed in winter and kept reasonably cool in summer. Indoor temperatures in winter should be fairly steady, around 70 degree for active, healthy people, higher for people at rest and for the infirm, and lower for sleeping. Winter comfort within a home is determined mostly by air and wall temperatures.( humidity and air circulation are somewhat less important factors).

Air temperature can be controlled only by heating devices- fireplaces, stoves, or furnace- and by ventilation. Wall temperature results from outdoor temperature and from the wall’s construction. Everyone knows that it feels cooler in front of a window than next to an insulated wall. In front of the window we lose our own body heat faster and thus tend to chill more readily. Too rapid loss of body heat makes us uncomfortable.

Temperature within the home normally vary more in summer than in winter. In summer, humidity and air circulation are most important factors in body comfort because low humidity and moving air help us to lose body heat. Summertime discomfort stems from too little loss of body heat. Thermostats make for comfort by helping to maintain uniform temperature. Cross Ventilation is must for summertime comfort. Air conditioning remains beyond the reach of a great many people, comfortable though it is. Air Delivered by the fans of AC is actually purer than “fresh” outdoor air, because it is filtered or washed.

Air free from dust and unpleasant odors is much to be sought. Fumes, gases, and vapors such as carbon monoxide, artificial, and natural gas are dangerous or even deadly.

Within the home, the most common sources of unpleasant odors are human body and cooking. Both can be kept to a minimum by the reasonable practice of personal cleanliness and by adequate ventilation. During the summertime odors can enter from the outside from improperly stored garbage and rubbish and from animal droppings on the premises.

In winter enough ventilation is secured- even in well constructed homes—from air leakage through porous walls and ceilings and around doors and windows. Just as we may safely occupy a home in daytime in winter with windows closed, so is it healthful to sleep at night with closed windows. In winter air does not need to be cold to be fresh. On the other hand, night air differs I no way from daytime air. Those who like to sleep in a cold room with windows open are free to do so, but should recognize that it is a matter af individual preference and not a question of health.

Proper Lighting

Every occupied room, bathrooms included, should have at least one window providing the greatest possible illumination and this, insofar as possible, without glare or shadow. Rooms that are shaded by trees, tall buildings, or porches need proportionally more window space.

Direct sunlight is often advantageous, especially in winter and particularly for the ill or infirm.
Noise takes its toll in tension, frayed nerves, and short tempers. Here the rural and suburban dwellers are apt to have the better of it. Air conditioning in city apartments is as useful for keeping noise out as for bringing cool fresh air in.

In a house with children, space is much a matter of comfort as of health. Play areas should also include outdoor space as well as room inside the home. The facilities such as parks must be considered among the rights, as well as the delights, of childhood.

For the Sake of Mental Health

The human spirit being what it is, people need both privacy and generous portions of companionship. Too much solitude requires relief through company of others. Too much of the world’s noise and tension, plus normal bits of family bickering, entitle parent and child alike to the release and relaxation that privacy alone can provide.

In the interest of privacy “ a room of my own” is ideal. A room shared with but one other person is next best, of course.

Normal family life provides those social contacts expected in the home and in the community. People cannot mentally healthy without them.

A suitable dwelling should have a living room or family room, one or more gathering places, plus kitchen, dining room, and whatever bathrooms and bedrooms the family may need and can afford. The need for companionship as well as for privacy, as moods change from time to time, can thus be satisfied to help keep the family happy.

Some families may occupy one dwelling for a lifetime, enduring a measure of crowding as perhaps too much space as children leave home. Others move to larger or smaller houses or apartments according to the space they need. Each method has points in its favor. The first accepts a bit crowding at times in return for community stature and stability. The second more nearly assures enough space at all times. Some opportunity shades over into community responsibility also. Recreational facilities and libraries plus the usual marks of our culture_ the shopping district, the church, and the school-all should be reasonably close at hand. And, though commuting is the lot of many, it is desirable that the bread-winner’s job should not be too far away.

Cleanliness and Orderliness

The mentally healthy, well-adjusted person can abide extremes of cleanliness and tidiness for short periods and can put up with disorder and disarray when necessary. But most persons prefer to live in a state between these extremes.

The good home will have facilities to ease the fatigue of the housewife’s 60 hour week. Direct and easy access to storage, cooking, dish washing, laundering, ironing, garbage and refuse disposal are a few examples from among dozens of regular tasks. It is unreasonable to have to carry supplies up and refuse down three to seven floors, as it necessary in some older apartments.
Circulation within the home, the ability to move with ease and purpose, is of primary importance to the whole family. Such things as narrow doors and halls, crooks and turns and unexpected step downs reduce the home’s live ability.

Cleanliness demands water, in plenty, at the right places, much of it hot, and proper pressure. Water so supplied makes the home a different world from one where water must be carried and heated on a stove. Plenty of water inevitably means cleaner people in a cleaner home. No harm can come from getting dirty either in honest labor or zestful play staying dirty is quite another matter. odilly only, to be always filthy or always spotlessly clean marks one as being abnormal perhaps emotionally disturbed.

The appeal of beauty is so universal that the good home will exhibit many attempts to create the beautiful. On succeeds in one home may fail in another, but the attempt will usually be made and should be encouraged. Success and satisfaction along these lines are emotionally stimulating and uplifting. Beauty for the sake of beauty needs no justification.

In like manner, a home marked by lack of beauty, poorly maintained and not in keeping with those around it, is an ever present cause of feeling of inferiority and emotional stress, particularly in children while we generally deplore the tendency to keep up with the joneses, we should not be too remarkably unlike them.

The Control Of contagious Diseases

Though contagious and infectious diseases no longer play the major role they once did American life their combined toll is still significant. The kind of home people live in, their size, design, and quality have a great deal to do with the amount of illness caused by communicable disease.

No house can be built that will entirely prevent contagious diseases among the occupants, but it goes without saying that well built homes give better protection than do jerry-built huts.

Safe Water And Sewage Disposal

Enough good, safe water is priceless heritage for a nation and a treasure in any home. Ideally it will be under pressure , as in a municipal supply, o through an automatic pump arrangement . It must not be subject to contamination by disposal of waste materials. Hopefully it will be free of objectionable tastes, odors, and chemicals.

With the nation becoming more and more densely populated, pure water-safe for domestic use-is becoming harder and harder to find. It is necessary, therefore , to protect, insofar as possible, all water supplies, whether for giant city or for the single rural or suburban dwelling.

The greatest threat to a good water supply is raw, untreated sewage. In many areas of the country industrial waste run a close second as a threat. Again, this is whether of a large city or an isolated home.

Sewage and industrial wastes therefore should be carefully collected and treated before being discharged into our water ways. Water, in turn, should be given adequate treatment before being used for domestic purposes. The drinking of water of unknown quality is a clear and present danger, an open invitation to attack by any of a number of serious diseases.

Fortunately, mankind has been able to device methods of treating sewage and industrial wastes successfully. Also, it is completely feasible to use and reuse treated water as it passes to the sea. Some cities and some homes, drawing their water form safe deep wells, as spared some of the tremendous expense of treating it to bring it up to drinking water standards. Even good water should be chlorinated to assure safety.

All domestic water supplies, whether public or private, should be tasted periodically for purity. Every consumer is entitled to know there is no risk of contamination.

In spite of the tremendous knowledge built up in this field there is much water of questionable quality in daily use in this country. The old time pit-privy has not disappeared from the face of the land. Such practice contaminates the ground water and the wells in some rural areas.

Subdivisions in rapidly growing areas outside city or village boundaries are sometimes provided only with septic tanks instead of sewer systems. Sooner or later this is likely to cause trouble and expense.

Improper way of drainage disposal

Just as water must be protected before it is brought into a home and as sewage must be properly handled as it leaves, so must care be exercised within the home. This involves having correctly installed, leak-proof plumbing, with no possible cross-connection between water pipes and sewer lines. The possibility of such an occurrence seems beyond belief, but cross-connections do occur with distressing frequency. And have been responsible for many outbreaks of water-borne disease.


Protection Against Vermin

Man’s most health-endangering enemies around the home are rats, flies, and mosquitoes. Other vermin, such as roaches, may not be implicated in the spread of disease, but should be eliminated for general health reasons. All can under given circumstances cause disease, so that necessary measure to keep them out, or to destroy the, are implicit in the good home. Sound construction and screening are the principle weapons. Rats and flies attracted primary by food. Thus, you can generally keep them away by storing all garbage and rubbish in containers that are fly-tight and rodent-proof.

Pets and fleas go together like macroni and cheese. Lice cannot always be avoided, particularly head lice encountered at school. Some ticks are to be expected, particularly by persons who love forest and field.

Feces from large pets such as dogs, deposited on the dwelling premises, are frequently causes of odor and fly infestation. During the summer months, such conditions account for the majority of citizens complaints reaching health departments. Such nuisances are an abuse of neighborliness as well as a menace to health and an affront to decency. The real solution is neighborly observance of the Golden Rule.

All vermin are to be combated on general principles, whether they are of disease-producing or merely nuisance varieties. Reliable poisons exist to rid the home if they are applied successfully at the time of invasion. These poisons must be properly used.

Food Protection

Most of food requires good refrigeration to keep it fresh. Every home should be able to keep foods at 50 degree or lower. Failure to do so is to invite trouble from any of the number of disease producing agents.

Removing food from the refrigerator, using part of it, and allowing the remainder to stand and grow warm, is a particularly bad habit to acquire. Unused portions should be returned promptly so they will stay cold.

Contact Infection

It is obvious, and experience has proved time and again, that crowding promotes the spread of certain infectious diseases. Influenza and the common cold are typical examples. While no house can be built big enough to guarantee the occupants protection against contact diseases, overcrowded homes definitely are harmful in this respect. Sleeping space seems to be particularly important.

Bedrooms should provide 50 or more square feet per person and beds should be 3 or more feet apart, especially in case of illness of a communicable nature. Thus, tiered bunks or double-deck beds are undesirable.

For The Sake of Safety

Home safety implies a sound structures reasonably fire-resistant, and not likely to collapse under the impact of the locality’s most rigorous weather. In urban and suburban communities, building codes serve to insure these conditions. Rural dwellers, despite of the many compensations of rural living, probably would profit by the application of some of the rules required under city building codes.

Different areas of our immense nation decree different building methods. Homes have varying degrees of fire resistance. Whether in the magnificent urban apartment housing hundreds of people, or in more modest domiciles, reasonable fire-resistance and accessible exists to be used in case of fire and essential.

Involved in fire protection also are such things as construction of chimneys and flues, furnaces, stoves, and electrical wiring. Automatic circuit breakers are coming to replace the older style of fuse box, but the dangers of the penny inserted behind the burned out fuse still exist, as do many other hazards created by carelessness or ignorance.

• Some of the worst home booby traps are:

• Poor lighting;

• Stairways that are too narrow, too steep, too crooked;

• Winding stairways with inadequate tread on the inner side of the curve and no handrail along the wall;

• Toys, stools, chairs, or ladders out of place, left where the unwary may trip over them;

• Low window sills that lead to falls by careless leaners, especially children;

• Bathrooms with slick floor, tub, or shower surfaces, and inadequate holds or grab-bars;

• Electrical fixtures or outlets that can be reached while standing in water;

• Two-way swinging doors;

• Sharp turns that can lead to collisions;

• Carbon monoxide from inadequate stove, heater, or fireplace flues or from a leak of either natural or artificial fuel gas;

• Burns, from an endless number of causes;

• Electrical shocks;

• Toxic vapors, as from cleaners and solvents, as well as insecticides improperly and too extensively used;

• Explosions;

• Poisonings.
  

Safe living and maintaining good health involve the same basic principles whether one lives in the city or on a farm. However, the problems and hazards peculiar to rural living not experienced elsewhere. The proper handling of toxic chemicals such as insecticide sprays, the safe use of dangerous farm machines, the utilization of techniques to prevent spread of animal diseases to humans, provision for pure water, and adequate sewage disposal for the farm home are built some of the many areas which should be of special concern to farm families.

The Rural home

If necessary illness and accidents are to be prevented on the farm, a thorough knowledge of the dangers and how to prevent unfortunate result is essential. Knowledge of the toxic potential of the many chemical products used in the home and on the farm is needed. The majority of farm chemicals are adequately labeled as to proper precautions in using. It is failure to follow instructions or not even reading the instructions which most often give rise to serious consequences. Proper storage of chemicals from the children is important.

The use of various pesticides about the farm is becoming increasingly a part of good farming techniques. Certainly this products should be used with the utmost caution including the use of the protective clothing when advocated by the manufacturer.

Disease testing programs in animal herds are important in the eradication of diseases such as bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis. Water used on the farm for human consumption can carry serious disease germs. Certainly the water supply should be tested for harmful ingredients, both chemical and bacterial.

Long hours in operating a piece of farm equipment in the field without the periods of adequate rest results in undue fatigue which can also be responsible for farm machine accidents.