Not So Good

The state of the nation's health could be a lot better. That was what they said again & again in Boston last week at the 76th annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.

In some ways, we are worse off than we were a century ago, said Dr. Abel Wolman, professor of sanitary engineering at Johns Hopkins, and our boasted progress in health is not as great as many like to think. There is hardly a stream in the U.S. that is not more polluted than it was 100 years ago, and, said Dr. Wolman, "there is hardly a city in Massachusetts or one in the rest of the U.S. in which the conditions of housing are not essentially worse than those, at which the Shattuck report * directed severe criticism." In Washington, D.C., he added, 100,000 people draw their drinking water from hydrants in the yard and use outdoor privies. There are almost 6,000 communities in the U.S. with no public water system, more than 9,000 without sewerage systems; in 8,300 communities, where some 70 million people live, there are no modern facilities for collecting and getting rid of garbage.

* In 1850 Lemuel Shattuck, statistician and genealogist, wrote a report for the Massachusetts legislature that has become known as the "bible of public health in the U.S." He made 50 recommendations ranging from smoke control to pure food laws.

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