Abstract
THE two reports by Dr. A. C. Houston, director of water examination, recently issued by the Metropolitan Water Board, show how much is now being done to safeguard from contamination with dangerous micro-organisms the metropolitan water supply, which is admittedly largely derived from sewage-polluted sources. The eighth annual report gives the results of the chemical and bacteriological examination of the London waters for the twelve months ended March 31, 1914. In the introduction Dr. Houston points out that experience in the Water Board laboratories indicates that Bacillus coli is practically totally absent from pure waters; in ten specially devised experiments with the Twins well (Deptford) water, typical B. coli was absent from 10,000 c.c., and it has been abundantly shown that it is possible, at a not impracticable cost, so to purify the raw river waters that the final product contains no typical B. coli in ioo cc. in more than 80 per cent. of the samples.
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HEWLETT, R. The Metropolitan Water Supply 1 . Nature 94, 99 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/094099a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/094099a0