Half the population depends on ground water for domestic uses. Use is increasing 25 percent per decade. Ground water is generally used with little or no treatment. Some persons would transfer the discharge of our waste products from contaminated surface streams to the land and thus relatively clean ground waters. No standards exist that protect ground‐water quality. Research necessary to give assurance that natural interaction of waste water and soils will remove, to acceptable levels, potentially harmful contaminants, organic and inorganic, that permeate today's waste streams and today's health concerns, has not been done. Success reports on land treatment of waste water have a not evaluated deterioration of ground water from organic contamination. Most waste waters contain synthetic organics in varying concentrations. EPA recommends their reduction in drinking water to the lowest possible level. Most instances of ground‐water contamination have been discovered after drinking water is contaminated. Unless the public is willing to treat ground water as it does water from surface streams, greater control of land disposal practices must be exercised. Current practice does not indicate the necessary controls are contemplated or recognized. It follows that the widespread use of the land treatment alternative is, in reality, an accident waiting to happen.

THE sanitary storage, collection, and disposal of municipal refuse have been a community problem, in varying degrees, since men first banded together for protection. It is only in recent years, however, that the problem has begun to receive conceited attention and action. Studies have shown that the sanitary handling of refuse is an important factor in controlling such disease vectors as ra.ts, flies, and mosquitoes. The feeding of raw garbage to hogs has been shown to be not only an important factor in the chain of transmission of trichinosis to man, but also a. primary mode of transmission of virus diseases of swine, such as vesicular ex-Mr. Hope is chief of the General Engineering Program, Division of Sanitary Engineering Services,

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Recently, the Public Health Service (PHS) milk, food service, shellfish, and interstate carrier sanitation programs were transferred to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) within the Consumer Protection and Environmental Health Service. To administer these programs, a Division of Sanitation Control has been created within FDA's Bureau of Compliance. The Division consists of three branches: the Milk and Food Service Sanitation Branch, the Interstate Travel Sanitation Branch, and the Shellfish Sanitation Branch. Field operations will be under the administrative control of the Associate Food and Drug Directors in the ten regional offices of the Department. Scientific activities associated with the programs will continue primarily at the laboratories in Cincinnati, which are now a part of the FDA Bureau of Science. The transfer of these voluntary, cooperative programs does not imply any change in their direction or philosophy. The programs have been shifted to the FDA so that our total. effort in food protection can be more closely coordinated and can have the benefit of the strongest possible scientific base. The FDA will work with State agencies and private industry to continue and strengthen the voluntary, cooperative approach which has characterized the PHS programs in the past. Maintaining the purity and safety of the nation's food supply encompasses problems that grow more complex with every innovation in food technology and with the changing life-style that marks contemporary life. New ways of preparing, packaging, and distributing food introduce new problems, while some of the old familiar hazards of foodborne diseases are intensified or complicated. The Consumer Protection and Environmental Health Service was established to provide a single agency that can take into account the relationship of all environmental problems, coordinate activities, and provide leadership to the nation's effort to maintain environmental quality and protect the consumer. It includes, in addition to the Food and Drug Administration, the National Air Pollution Control Administration, and the Environmental Control Administration.