HUNT GERMS IN STREET CARS.
City Chemist Has Been Making Tests
With Culture Plates.
Are the street cars a menace to public health, and do they carry germs that are producers of disease?
With a view of determining this point the city pure food department and City Chemist Cross have been making tests with culture plates. During the rush hours on the street cars, morning and night, these culture plates have been placed in the Brooklyn, Vine, Rockhill, Troost and Indiana cars. The plates are of glass, and floating germs adhere to their surface.
The exposures show the glasses to be completely covered with atoms of variuos descriptions, but whether these are impregnated with disease germs it will take from three to five days to develop. The plates exposed in the Vine street cars showed the greatest accumulations.
Dr. W. M Cross, the chemist, says that the air is filled with disease-carrying germs which settle on the clothing and shoes of passengers and in that way are carried into cars, and if cleanliness is not maintained that the germs enter the systems of passengers and cause fevers and illness of various degrees.
