Lectures on Ventilation / Being a Course Delivered in the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia

by Lewis W. Leeds

Thus, added to the five hundred tons of carbonic acid thrown from the lungs of its animal life every day, are many times that amount, (some two thousand tons,) daily, pouring out from its forest of factory chimneys.

To this city were the labors of the "Health of Towns Commission" first directed, to see if they could not find in the air of its streets that mysterious influence that has caused such alarm throughout the civilized world, as the thoughtful and intelligent sanitarian sees one-half of all his fellow-citizens hurried to untimely graves.

They were disappointed, and well might Dr. Smith exclaim, after the most thorough and careful investigations, "How insignificant are the works of art in contaminating that vast ocean of air that is constantly sweeping over the surface of the earth!" But do not be discouraged: more recent investigations have discovered the whereabouts of this pestilential breath.

I have placed the table of Dr. Angus Smith's analysis of the air of Manchester at the head of the list, and have copied it complete, because it is the only table that I have examined of the analysis of the air of towns in Europe or North America, in which there occurs an amount of carbonic acid exceeding ten parts in ten thousand.

Here we see three such cases in the twenty-eight experiments, one ten, one twelve and one fifteen.

The average of the whole is also greater than in any other similar tables, being about seven and a half parts in ten thousand. This is certainly quite a perceptible contamination, pure air containing four or four and a half parts in ten thousand. Yet considerable as this appears in this view, the additional amount of carbonic acid is only the proportion that would be added to the air, if unchanged, of a room fifteen feet square and ten feet high, by a father, mother and three children, with a gas-light, in seven minutes.

And this, probably, is the highest average contamination that is produced by artificial means upon the air of any city in the world.

There are, of course, great natural causes which affect the air of whole countries, such as the decomposition of great masses of vegetable matter similar to that occurring on the low flat lands along rivers, especially where they overflow their banks, like the Ohio and Mississippi. The best system of ventilation, as applicable to this kind of foul air, is to keep as far out of its reach as possible.

The other tables giving the analysis of the air of London, Paris, Madrid, Geneva, Bolton, England, at different elevations on the mountains, on the Atlantic Ocean, Washington City and various other places, are interesting only because they show so great a uniformity in the carbonic acid, seldom exceeding six parts to the ten thousand, and seldom under four.

But now let us look upon the other side of the room. Here we have tables giving the "carbonic acid in houses." Here we will find very different results. But the first is a green-house; in that there is no trace of carbonic acid in the evening and scarcely a trace in the morning. Plants, you know, absorb the carbonic acid, and give off oxygen, while animals absorb the oxygen and give off carbonic acid, thus keeping up the equilibrium in nature, as is so beautifully shown in the aquarium. Plants are generally supposed to give off carbonic acid at night, but it must be in very small quantities.