Onitsha,
Anambra State, has been ranked as the world’s most polluted city,
according to a data collected between 2011 and 2015, just released by
the WHO. According to the WHO, an air quality monitor there registered
594 micrograms per cubic metre of microscopic PM10 particles, and 66 of
the more deadly PM2.5s.'
Onitsha’s figures are nearly twice as bad as notoriously polluted cities
such as Kabul, Beijing and Tehran and 30 times worse than London.
Onitsha, say academics, is a textbook example of the perils of rapid
urbanisation without planning or public services creating a sustained
pollution assault on its water and air. .
As a tropical port city which has doubled in size to over 1 million
people in just a few years, it is frequently shrouded in plumes of black
diesel smoke from old ships; it has no proper waste incineration
plants; its construction sites and workshops emit clouds of dust and its
heavy traffic is some of the worst in Nigeria.
A recent study of Onitsha’s water pollution found more than 100 petrol
stations in the city, often selling low-quality fuel, dozens of
unregulated rubbish dumps, major fuel spills and high levels of arsenic,
mercury, lead, copper and iron in its water. The city’s many metal
industries, private hospitals and workshops were all said to be heavy
polluters emitting chemical, hospital and household waste and sewage....
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