Write Right~Clean Your Basement--Avoid Effluvia!

Do you think you have problems in your basement? Is it messy? Too many boxes? Tools? Spiders or centipedes? Leaks? The bogeyman? 

Well, how about effluvia?  Effluvium (a term no longer in technical use) was the exhalation or emanation of bad odors that were of an injurious and noxious nature. Effluvia is related to miasmas, the topic I discussed last week. Both were bad air thought to cause disease when inhaled.

Here’s an excerpt from The Young Housewife’s Counsellor and Friend (1871):

Examine your cellars frequently at all seasons, especially in the spring, when vegetables are sprouting and decaying. The effluvia from decomposing vegetable matter will engender disease. Have everything of the kind removed, with all mouldy articles, boxes, barrels, tubs, especially such as have contained vegetables, pickles, either of meats or vegetables, fish or spirits, vinegar, wines, or decaying matter of any kind. Leave the doors and window open frequently for airing; whitewash at least once a year, and fumigate, if any disagreeable odors be present, with chloride of lime. Attention to such matters may save the lives of your family. Surely worth the pains. Typhoid fevers, cholera, etc. are engendered in this way.

Based on this, I think I’d rather take on the bogeyman than a basement full of effluvia.