By Hamisu Adamu Dandajeh
Inhalation of atmospheric air contaminated with particulates has led and is still leading to the rising global human morbidities and mortalities. World Health Organisation (WHO) linked about 7million deaths to air pollution yearly. These deaths were consistently more than the total global mortalities from Malaria, HIV/AIDs, and tuberculosis combined, and among which over 114,100 were from Nigeria, the highest in the whole of Africa. Anthropogenic sources of such air contamination in Nigeria, as an oil-based economy, could be gas flaring, tail-pipe exhausts from road transport vehicles, diesel and gasoline generators, burning residential trash, biomass burning for cooking, soot from petroleum refining, industrial exhausts and dust. Such pollutants comprise complex substances like particulate matter (mixtures of suspended solid and liquid particles in the air), ozone, oxides of nitrogen, carbon mono oxide and volatile organic compounds. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) had recently established correlations between human exposure to atmospheric air contaminated by particulates and fatalities due to COVID-19 in the United States.
Nigeria had an extremely high pollution index of 86.89% and was ranked 6th out of 111 countries in the Mid-2020. Dangerously unhealthy quality of air in Nigeria has a consequence of lowering our average life expectancy. For example, research studies carried out by the Public Health England in the year 2014 showed that the average life expectancy of 1 out of 15 individuals exposed to air pollution in London Borough of Camden was reduced by 13.3 years. World Bank statistics of 2018 showed that the average life expectancy in Nigeria was about 54.33 years. This was Markedly lower than most of its neighbouring African countries: Ghana (63.78 years), Niger (62.02years) and Cameroon (58.92 years). Developed economies like the USA (78.54 years), UK (81.26), and Japan (84.21 years) had significantly much higher life expectancies in the same year, not only because of the quality of their public health care systems, but also because of the quality of the air they breathe.
When particulate-contaminated air is inhaled by an individual, coarse particles from those particulates of diameters less than 10micro-meter (PM10) are deposited into the superior respiratory airways (nose and nasal passages), while fine particulates of diameters lower than 2.5micro-meter (PM2.5) are accumulated in the inferior respiratory tract (trachea and bronchioles). However, inhalable particles of sub-micron level diameter and fine particulates of diameter lower than 100nano-meter are deposited into the human lungs of an individual; causing various health complications and ultimately premature death. Nigeria has an average concentration of PM2.5 of 71.8μg/m3 in the year 2017; which was relatively more than seven times the outdoor air quality annual mean guideline of 10μg/m3 approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Estimating the economic cost of these emissions, Lagos State alone had an estimated health cost implication of air pollution of six hundred and thirty-one billion naira (N631 billion or 2.1billion USD) in the year 2018, amounting to about 2.1% of the Gross domestic Product’s (GDP) of the State.
Stepping down these statistics to children, WHO’s data suggested that 93% of the global children population under the age of 15 (about 1.8 billion children) and 630million under the age of 5 were exposed daily to polluted air, putting them at significant levels of risk. While exposure to polluted indoor and outdoor air affects the physical health as well as the cognitive development of children, some of them die untimely from inhaling toxic air. Based on the WHO’s 2016 estimates, for instance, mortalities from acute respiratory infections of children caused by air pollution were about 600,000 globally. Children from low- and medium-income countries like Nigeria were most tragically affected than those from high-income nations. WHO’s report, which emanated from the First Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health, held on 30th October 2018 in Geneva, also revealed that pregnant women, who are exposed to toxic air, are highly likely to prematurely give birth to low-weight babies; whose neurodevelopment and cognitive capabilities are poorly affected. Children’s exposure to polluted air can as well trigger asthma, poor lung function, childhood cancer; and culminates in chronic cardiovascular diseases.
Children are more susceptible to breathing polluted air, since they breathe much more rapidly than adults and their respiratory tract are much more permeable. They also are more exposed to the playing grounds where highly concentrated pollutants from burning dirty fuels for heating or cooking finally settle down. For the children in Nigerian to be protected from air pollution, grow and fully achieve their full potentials, the following actions are recommended to inter-sectoral policymakers, especially in the areas of energy, environment, and climate change. Investing massively in policies that improve the quality of air in Nigeria to achieving WHO’s global guidelines on air quality would enhance the health and safety of our children and resulting in incredible life-saving benefits.
Recommendations
1) Provision of comprehensive air pollution control plan in the country
2) Placing Air Quality Monitoring devices within strategic locations in all the major cities in Nigeria for consistently measuring the air quality index in those cities
3) Schools and playgrounds of children should be positioned far away from major roads, factories and power plants to reduce the children’s exposure to toxic air.
4) Massive tree planting and creation of green hubs and parks all over the country to act as natural carbon sinks to mitigate the long-term effects of climate change.
5) Increasing the mix of renewable, clean and sustainable energy technologies in the provision of electricity
6) Using 100% biofuels or blending biofuels with fossil fuels for cleaner road transport applications
7) Removal of road unworthy or high polluting vehicles; especially within residential-commercial roads
8) Special Toxicity Charge for high polluting vehicles entering the major cities to reduce the pool of mobile pollution sources in the country.
9) Switching to clean and sustainable cooking fuels and technologies.
10) Investing in energy-efficient housing and urban planning to mitigate climate change.
11) Massive awareness on the health effects of air pollution
12) Better management and disposal of waste through avoiding open defecation and reducing the amount of waste that is burnt within communities
Hamisu Adamu Dandajeh, Ph.D is a Thermofluid lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria and presently a Kashim Ibrahim Fellow in Kaduna State.
Email: dandajeh@mit.edu
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Sky Daily
