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of bread containing a nail. A dairy company was fined on two
occasions—once for selling milk in a dirty bottle and once for selling
a bottle of milk containing foreign matter (wire mesh). Another firm
was fined on two occasions for selling milk in dirty bottles.
6. INDUSTRIAL EFFLUVIA. Complaints of industrial odour
continue to be received and in previous reports the elimination of
industrial odour has been discussed. One wonders how these agents
for the elimination of smell actually operate either indoors or outdoors.
There is a possibility that the deodorant material oxidises or causes
some chemical change to take place in the particles (the aerosol)
producing the smell, which results in a chemical compound having
a different odour or having little cdour at all. This might possibly
occur indoors but almost certainly is impossible in the case of an odour
pervading a substantial area outside. There is a possibility that the
material used to obliterate the offensive odour in fact merely operates
by masking the offensive odour with one more acceptable to the human
sense. One hesitates to suggest that the deodoiants can be effective
by paralysing temporarily or semi-permanently the sensory nerve
endings of smell in the nasopharynx. One feels this is almost an
impossibility outdoors and would be extremely hazardous and fraught
with considerable risk if used inside a particular room. The obviously
hygienic and logical way to obliterate complaint of odour, is to avoid
producing the situation where odoriferous particles become suspended
in the atmosphere, either indoors or out. This involves strict cleanliness
indoors and the treatment of fumes before discharge from
industrial premises.
7. INSTRUMENTS. The increasing desire and need for
quantitive evaluation rather than subjective impression, has led us to
seek instruments which can record quite impartially the degree of
disturbance actually created in areas where complaint is received. The
need for these instruments has become intensified more recently and
in the Department we experimented with the production of a transparency
of different degrees of opacity transmitting light to the extent
of 20%, 40%, 60%, corresponding to the degrees of Ringelrnann's
Scale. The Ringelmann Scale is the standard selected in the Clean
Air Act but it is realised that the scale is not absolute and is a very
difficult one indeed to use. The experimental transparency produced
in the Health Department was not sufficiently reliable for field use
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