Tamuno-owunari Perri
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Rumulumini, Rivers state, Nigeria
Vincent Ezikornwor Weli
Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria
Bright Poronakie
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Rumulumini, Rivers state, Nigeria
Tombari Bodo
Department of Flood, Erosion Control and Coastal Zone Management, Rivers State Ministry of Environment, Rivers State, Nigeria
Due to the visibility of soot in the environment of the Niger Delta especially Rivers State that has led to the increase of espiratory Tract Infections (RTIs) in the region, this study was undertaken to determine the relationship between Particulate Matter (PM2.5) concentration and the incident of Respiratory Tract Infections (RTIs) in selected urban centres of the Niger Delta. Data on RTIs were collected from the Hospital Management Boards of the Ministries of Health of Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta States and the data for PM2.5 were remotely sensed from 2016 to 2019, and subsequently analyzed with ANOVA and Spearman’s rank correlation statistics. The findings of this study revealed that there was significant variation in the occurrence of PM2.5 across the selected urban centres in the Niger Delta Region. The PM2.5 for the reviewed years was far above the World Health Organization (WHO) annual permissible limit of 10 µg/m3 thereby exacerbating Respiratory Tract Infections (RTIs).The epidemiology of the RTIs showed that there are basically four (4) prominent RTI diseases: Asthma, Tuberculosis, Pneumonia and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The result of this study showed that the concentration of PM2.5 varies in all the selected cities, and the mean monthly variation (2016-2019) showed that Port Harcourt had 47.27 µg/m3 for January while Yenagoa and Asaba had 46 µg/m3 and 47.51 µg/m3 respectively for January; while the lowest mean value in the cities were seen within the month of September and October, which also had a strong seasonal influence on the concentration of PM2.5. The concentration of PM2.5 and the numbers of RTIs also gradually increases in the study areas from 2016 to 2019. The study recommends that the necessary regulatory bodies should closely monitor the activities of the companies likely to cause such pollution; guild them through their operations and give prompt sanctions and heavy fines to defaulters of the accepted standards.
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Copyright © 2021 Tamuno-owunari Perri, Vincent Ezikornwor Weli, Bright Poronakie, Tombari Bodo
This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.
