By C.-E. A. WINSLOW AND DAVID MOXON.
(Received for publication Nov. 22, 1927.)
The possibility of acquiring intestinal infections by bathing in polluted waters is an obvious one although the actual extent of the danger involved is difficult to estimate. Jaeger (1892) reported ten such infections among soldiers who had bathed in the Danube. Chapin (1916) cites an outbreak of typhoid fever of similar origin at the Walmer naval station in England, described by Reece. The Committee on Bathing Places (1922) of the American Public Health Association reports an epidemic of typhoid at a boys' camp due to bathing in polluted water, as well as a number of cases of eye, ear, nose and throat infections, in which lowering of vital resistance due to chill may have been a more important factor than infection.
The problem of pollution of bathing beaches has long been an important one for the city of New Haven. The entire sewage of the city, amounting according to Fuller and McClintock (1926) to 20,300,006 gallons a day is discharged from five main outfalls and from many private sewers into a harbor with a tidal prism of 8 billion gallons a day, amounting to a total dilution of one part of sewage in 400 parts of water. The backing up due to ebb and flow of the tide and the fact that the harbor has a rather narrow channel with shallow areas along the shore, however, make the local pollution at many points far exceed the average. Harrub (1916), using float tests, showed that all parts of the harbor are subject to pollution by fresh sewage within six hours after its discharge from the outfalls; and Fuller and McClintock (1926) point out that the waters of the harbor as a whole are so polluted as to constitute a serious menace to public health. In a series of dissolved oxygen samples analyzed on August 27 and September 10, 1926, they found that in a line between Bradley Point and Lighthouse Point 88 per cent saturation was recorded as compared with only 59 per cent between Sandy Point and Fort Hale.
New Haven Harbor is extensively used for bathing, not only at large public bathing places in the outer harbor but also on a smaller scale at many points in the area of gross pollution, even in the Quinnipiac River. Ciampolini and Hitchcock (1923) analyzed a series of 61 cases of typhoid fever occurring during the summer of 1921-22 and concluded that most of them were undoubtedly due to bathing in the harbor waters. The Health Department has posted warning signs and has attempted to prevent bathing in the upper harbor, but the control of such a practice in hot weather is practically impossible and almost every summer cases of typhoid have occurred which are reasonably attributable to bathing beach infection.
The city authorities have now recognized the only real solution of the problem and have adopted a program of sewage treatment, according to the program presented by Fuller and McClintock (1926). The present study was undertaken before the Fuller and McClintock report was made with the view of re-enforcing its evidence as to general harbor conditions by data bearing directly on the condition of the shore waters actually used for bathing, a point not covered by other investigators. The results are presented herewith in view of their possible relation to the general problem of bathing beach pollution elsewhere.
*From the Department of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine.