Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/119

 Studying Germs on Wheels

��Climb on board this automobile and see if the water you drink is pure

SCIENCE has made wonderful prog- ress in devising methods of quickly discovering sources of danger to public health by the pollution and con- tamination of food and water supplies, and has found means of counteracting the dangers threatening from germs and other impurities. But promptness of action is imperative in all cases, and in recognition of this fact, the efforts of the health authorities in all states have been directed toward finding some means of expediting the work of the health officials and enabling them to cover every locality requiring their services without danger- ous delay.

The Department of Health of the State of New Jersey has recently introduced a traveling field laboratory mounted on a motor chassis. In outward appearance the vehicle resembles a delivery wagon. The closed and covered body has doors in front and in the rear, and forms a small room used primarily for bacteriological work. On one side of the inside wall is a bench or shelf upon which rests two incu- bators which are heated by electricity from a storage battery, which also operates the starting and lighting system of the automobile. The shelf also pro- vides enough room for the making of

���The laboratory on wheels is the family doctor for New Jersey water systems

culture plates and for their examination for the purpose of counting the germs. The incubators may also be removed, and, by changing the voltage of the heating lamps, may be used on any 110-volt cir- cuit at any water-pumping or filtration plant.

Another portion of the equipment carried by the automobile is a portable chlorine gas disinfecting apparatus by means of which any water supply found to be unsafe may be purified by the addition of chlorine gas. By means of this traveling laboratory the necessary inspection of dairies and water supplies in various remote parts of the State has been greatly expedited.

���The interior of the laboratory. At left appears the chlorine gas disinfecting ap- paratus and at right an inspector is shown making a chemical analysis

��lOS

�� �