Many erroneous ideas still prevail about sewer gas and its danger to health which arises, by having so-called "modern conveniences" in our dwellings. It is the purpose of this paper, without in anyway adding to the "plumbing scare," clearly to define wherein the danger consists, but at the same time to establish rules for the proper draining and plumbing of houses, which, if carefully observed, will secure to the anxious house owner work of superior quality and of a positively safe character.

Plumbing fixtures, which were considered a luxury years ago, are now believed to be necessary, not only for comfort and convenience, but also, and even more so, for health and for cleanliness. Even a small house is nowadays generally provided with a kitchen sink, a water closet, and sometimes a bath tub, while in a costly modern residence, arranged with an elaborate system of plumbing, we find kitchen, pantry and scullery sinks, slop sinks, laundry tubs, stationary wash basins in closets near bedrooms, a great number of bath or dressing rooms, with water closets, urinals, bath and foot tubs, bidets and other fixtures.

The suggestions and recommendations of this report apply with equal force to the drainage and plumbing of tenements, small houses, costly residences, villas, apartment houses, hotels, factories, school-houses or public buildings. As every plumbing fixture is not only an outlet for the waste water to the drain, but possibly may become an inlet for drain air, the danger increases with the number of fixtures. A multitude of fixtures requires a large number of soil and waste pipe stacks, and the chance of leakage of sewer gas through defective joints increases correspondingly. But be the house large or small, its drainage and plumbing system should always be so arranged as entirely to exclude any possibility of the escape of sewer gas.