VENTILATION IN THE FLOW OF MEASLES AND CHICKENPOX THROUGH A COMMUNITY

Abstract

During the past decade, increasing attention has been given to the theory that indoor air is a vehicle of respiratory infection and to the logical sequence of such a theory, that the transfer from person to person of such infection can be reduced by increasing ventilation. In the sense of actual replacement of vitiated air by fresh outdoor air, however, ventilation on a scale adequate to reduce disease incidence is impractical; interest has therefore been focused on the sanitary equivalent of ventilation, air disinfection. A study of air disinfection in certain schools in and near Philadelphia demonstrated that the chances of transfer from child to child of the viruses of measles and chickenpox¹within the classrooms had been decidedly reduced by radiant disinfection of air.²Thus the physical factors governing bactericidal irradiation of air, on which the engineering design of installations is based, were sufficiently well understood to