Assessment of the Air Quality in the Roadside of Malete Town, Kwara State.

Assessment of the Air Quality in the Roadside of Malete Town, Kwara State.

CHAPTER ONE

Aim and Objectives

The aim of this study is to assess the quality of air in Roadside of Malete Town, Kwara State, Nigeria.

To determine the concentration of PM₅, PM₁₀, TVOC, HCHO, relative humidity and temperature of the Malete Roadside.
To investigate the factors responsible for air pollution within the residence and the community.

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

Air Pollutant

A number of air pollutants pose severe health risks and can sometimes be fatal even in small amounts. Almost 200 of them are regulated by law; some of the most common are mercury, lead, dioxins, and benzene. “These are also most often emitted during gas or coal combustion, incinerating, or in the case of benzene—found in gasoline,” Walke says. Benzene, classified as a carcinogen by the EPA, can cause eye, skin, and lung irritation in the short term and blood disorders in the long term. Dioxins, more typically found in food but also present in small amounts in the air, can affect the liver in the short term and harm the immune, nervous, and endocrine systems as well as reproductive functions. Mercury attacks the central nervous system. In large amounts, lead can damage children’s brains and kidneys, and even minimal exposure can affect children’s IQ and ability to learn (Hutter et al., 2013).

Another category of toxic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), are by-products of traffic exhaust and wildfire smoke. In large amounts they have been linked to eye and lung irritation, blood and liver issues, and even cancer. In one study, the children of mothers exposed to PAHs during pregnancy showed slower brain-processing speeds and more pronounced symptoms of ADHD(Nnadozie et al., 2017).

Major Air Pollutant

Clean, dry air consists primarily of nitrogen and oxygen—78 percent and 21 percent respectively, by volume. The remaining 1 percent is a mixture of other gases, mostly argon (0.9 percent), along with trace (very small) amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen, helium, and more. Water vapour is also a normal, though quite variable, component of the atmosphere, normally ranging from 0.01 to 4 percent by volume; under very humid conditions the moisture content of air may be as high as 5 percent (Nnadozie et al., 2017).

There are six major air pollutants that have been designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as “criteria” pollutants, criteria meaning that the concentrations of these pollutants in the atmosphere are useful as indicators of overall air quality. The gaseous criteria air pollutants of primary concern in urban settings include sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide; these are emitted directly into the air from fossil fuels such as fuel oil, gasoline, and natural gas that are burned in power plants, automobiles, and other combustion sources.

Ozone (a key component of smog) is also a gaseous pollutant; it forms in the atmosphere via complex chemical reactions occurring between nitrogen dioxide and various volatile organic compounds (e.g., gasoline vapours). Airborne suspensions of extremely small solid or liquid particles called “particulates” (e.g., soot, dust, smokes, fumes, mists), especially those less than 10 micrometers (μm; millionths of a meter) in size, are significant air pollutants because of their very harmful effects on human health. They are emitted by various industrial processes, coal- or oil-burning power plants, residential heating systems, and automobiles.

Lead fumes (airborne particulates less than 0.5 μm in size) are particularly toxic and are an important pollutant of many diesel fuels (Isidro Montes et al., 2005).Except for lead, criteria pollutants are emitted in industrialized countries at very high rates, typically measured in millions of tons per year. All except ozone are discharged directly into the atmosphere from a wide variety of sources. They are regulated primarily by establishing ambient air quality standards, which are maximum acceptable concentrations of each criteria pollutant in the atmosphere, regardless of its origin. The several types of pollutants are described in turn below.

CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Description of the Study Area

This study was carried out in Malete Community, in Moro local government area of Kwara State, it lies within latitude 80 42’ 0’’, longitude 40 28’ 0’’ and – m above sea level. Malete falls under the southern Guinea savanna agro-ecological zone of Nigeria and the climate of Malete is sub-humid with annual rainfall of 1,248mm. Temperature rarely falls below 22⁰C while wet season temperature averages about 28⁰C. The peaks are 38⁰C (February – March) and 34⁰C (November – December) with district dry season of about 5months occurring from November to March (Ojanuga, 2006).

CHAPTER FOUR

RESULTS

Concentration of PM2.5 in Malete road side

Figure 4.1 below shows the average concentration of PM2.5 for the month of July for Malete Roadside. The west side of the roadside has the highest (36.67µg/m³) concentration while the east side has the lowest (17.27µg/m³) concentration of PM2.5. This shows that the air quality for PM2.5 was good. But there is no significance difference between north, center and south, west and south side of the roadside at p≤0.05.

CHAPTER FIVE

DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Discussion

In this study, total number of six (6) parameters (PM_2.5, PM₁₀, TVOC, HCHO, Temperature and Relative Humidity) was measured in five (5) different sampling points (East, North, South, West and Centre) in the Roadside of Malete Town, Moro local Government, Kwara State. All results were recorded in each of the cardinal points and were compared with the standard or acceptable values recommended by the WHO Air Quality Guidelines (AQG) to affirm the status of the points; either the air quality is good or detrimental to human health.

Conclusion

The observed air quality parameters of PM2.5, PM10, TVOC, HCHO, temperature and relative humidity in Malete Roadside. Only HCHO was detected to be within the recommended ranges by WHO Air Quality Guideline (AQG). PM2.5, PM10 and TVOC was detected a bit higher than the recommended range by WHO Air Quality Guideline (AQG). Such higher values are detrimental to infrastructure and are a health hazard to human being. Temperature was also detected to be a bit higher than the recommended value by WHO Air Quality Guideline (AQG). Relative humidity was also detected within the recommended value by WHO Air Quality Guideline (AQG).

Recommendations

My recommendation goes thus;

Regulatory agencies like NESREA, Ministry of Environment and other policy makers should update existing laws and regulations on air pollution and air quality standards in Nigeria.
The need for further air quality monitoring and assessment should be done in the city in order to preserve the changes in the quality of the environment and the public at large.
The use of personal protective equipment (PPEs) will go a long way in reducing the health risk associated with exposure to air pollutants among the vulnerable and sensitive groups in the study area.

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