CEMENT DUST AIR POLLUTION AND ITS EFFECTS ON HUMAN HEALTH IN EWEKORO LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, OGUN STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

In this thesis, the relationship between air pollution and human health has been investigated utilizing Geographic Information System (GIS) as an analysis tool. The research focus on how cement dust affects human health. The main objective of this study was to analyse the spatial variability of pollutants. The degradation of air quality is a major environmental problem that affects many surrounding regions of industrial sites, exposure to gaseous pollutants: CO, SO2, CO2, NOx, SOx, Gaseous Hg, Gaseous F and particulate matters: RSPM, SPM, particulate Hg, etc. cause severe health effect such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, cardiopulmonary mortality. A correlation test was performed to establish the relationship between air pollution and respiratory disease health records, both primary and secondary data sets which was used as dependent and independent variables. Comparison with WHO and FEPA standards was carried out. There was a significant positive correlation between variables of pollutant measured using Ordinary Least Square (OLS). Results show high prevalence of respiratory diseases of wards at proximity to the cement industry with the values of 0.161938mg/m3, 0.008332mg/m3 and 0.070943mg/m3 for CO, CO2 and SO2 respectively. There is significant increase in various diseases particularly respiratory problems both in workers as well as in the residents and there is need to take specific measures so that development may not be at the cost of human lives