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ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
Man began to pollute the environment when he first made fire and throughout the
centuries he has recognised the unwholesomeness of waste products. It is but comparatively
recently that an explosive increase in the production of durable goods and
the wider use of the products of an expanding chemical industry has created conditions
which without check may well adversely affect man's health and comfort.
In the public health service we have since the middle of the 19th century been
seeking not only to remedy unhealthy conditions but to prevent them. Today we take
for granted a pure domestic water supply, and recognise that adequate means of
sewerage and sewage disposal, and arrangements for the collection and disposal of
domestic refuse and the products of industry, are indispensable to a healthy environment.
High standards are called for in the production, storage and distribution of
food and shortcomings in these respects are frequently treated by the Courts in
exemplary fashion. Smoke-free atmosphere, not yet universal, is rapidly extending,
paradoxically more in the big towns than elsewhere, and in Barnet our target is to
make the Borough smoke-free by 1976. Housing legislation now recognises the need
not only to provide homes and to keep them in good repair, but to create an environment
in total which is socially acceptable.
We really owe our present environmental health services to the enthusiasm of
the sanitary reformers of a hundred years ago and it is our purpose today to exploit
the advances made in the creation of a healthy environment and, within the boundaries
of our authority, to seek to prevent conditions inimical to health.
The detailed account required by Regulations and meeting the requests of
Government Departments shows the range of work involved and the results achieved
by the whole staff of the Division.
WATER SUPPLY
The supply of water to the Borough is distributed by three companies, namely
the Colne Valley Water Company, the Lee Valley Water Company and the Metropolitan
Water Board. It is satisfactory in quantity and quality.
Raw water and water going into supply are regularly sampled by the companies
for bacteriological and chemical examination, and the results were reported to
conform to satisfactory standards of purity. The waters are not liable to plumbosolvent
action.
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