Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1876 — Salting the Streets in Winter. [ARTICLE]

Salting the Streets in Winter.

Looking out well ahead, as their countrymen generally get credit for doing, the members of the Glasgow Police Board had this slovenly and dangerous practice under discussion a few days ago. The gentleman who brought the subject before the meeting showed that there had been a considerable increase in deaths from lung disease in the city in 1875 over the previous year, and that there was medical testimony to the fact that these and other deaths were distinctly traceable to the saturation of foot passengers’ boots in the morning with the frozen brine, which kept the feet damp and cold the whole of the subsequent day. It is well to remember that besides the intense coldness of the mixture—five degrees below zero, or thirty-seven" degrees of frost—snow brine does not diy up as speedily as water alone would ; and after several’saturations in the mixture, boots never become thoroughly dry afterwards. The salting of streets is equally productive of injury to horses. It was stated by the speaker that during last winter three of the largest horse proprietors in Glasgow had laid up, from this cause alone, in one case fifteen, in another forty, and in a third no fewer than one hundred horses, the ailments of those animals having been produced by their wading through the snow and salt that had been mixed on the streets. This, we believe, was not a rare experience with the proprietors of horses in London last year, although the salt appears to have been scattered about with a less lavish hand in London than in Glasgow. What the authorities empowered the omnibus companies to do, was in both cities also practiced without permission by the tradesmen, in order to dissolve the snow on the footpaths, while at the same time they, frequently neglected to remove the sludge. The Glasgow board has remitted the matter to the magistrates, who are the proper parties to deal with it, and, from what passed at the meeting, it is probable that they will do so effectually; and set an example which the metropolitan authorities will do well to follow. Of the exceedingly baneful effect of the practice there can be no doubt, and the population of London are perhaps still worse prepared to resist the eflects of these freezing footpaths than those of Glasgow.— lron.