TY - JOUR AU - Laro, K O AU - Raheem, U A PY - 2018/11/22 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Ambient Air Quality and the Incidence of Selected Diseases: Some Urban Health Observations in Lagos, Nigeria JF - Impact: Journal of Transformation JA - IJT VL - 1 IS - 1 SE - Articles DO - UR - https://journals.aiu.ac.ke/index.php/impact/article/view/21 SP - 66-89 AB - <p>The quality of air is determined by the extent of atmospheric pollution. The USEPA identifies<br>six criteria pollutants namely particulate matter (PM), ground level ozone, carbon<br>monoxide, sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides and lead exposure as toxic and injurious to human<br>health. Thus, there is a need to examine ambient air quality and incidence of selected<br>diseases in Lagos, Nigeria. The data for the study include a five-year sampling on criteria<br>pollutants and data on selected airborne diseases that were collected for the same period of<br>time. Data analysis adopted the use of multiple regression for examining the relationship<br>between ambient criteria pollutants and the occurrence of diseases. GIS procedure was also<br>employed to produce a map showing the spatial pattern of criteria pollutants. The findings<br>reveal an R2 of 19.8, 13.9, 8.9, 8.4 and 16.8 percent respectively for asthma, bronchitis, heart<br>failure, lung cancer and tuberculosis. The results show a low level of association and this<br>was attributed to other causal factors responsible for the occurrence of the selected diseases.<br>However, this study provides evidence of an association between outdoor air pollution and<br>increased risk from these diseases. Therefore, the study recommends that governments, and<br>other stakeholders in health sectors should harmonize efforts, resources and ideas towards<br>effective planning, monitoring, policy implementation and provision of facilities that could<br>control and ameliorate the presence of pollutants to which urban residents are exposed<br>thereby reducing the health effects from such exposures.</p> ER -