Tanzania told to invest in air pollution monitoring sensors
Air pollution continues to raise the number of fatalities and investments for change need to be considered seriously
What you need to know:
- To counter the hazardous effects of pollution, anti-pollution measures like air quality sensors need to be set in place. For Tanzania, pollution effects continue to escalate.
Arusha. Tanzanians have been warned of unsafe air quality and its attendant health hazards.
Anti-pollution measures in place should be complemented with installation of air quality monitoring sensors.
“High levels of air pollution is a serious health hazard,” asserted science expert, Simon Mkasimongwa.
He added: “It is a top killer in the world and can be tackled through reducing emissions.”
Besides cancer and respiratory diseases, other health hazards he cited were a range of heart complications.
He gave the warning here on Friday during a conversation on air pollution by environmental activists.
According to him, the situation in the country was critical despite insufficient research and data.
However, he insisted that air quality in Tanzania remains unsafe for people as per the global standards.
The levels were nearly three times higher than those recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The most recent data indicates that the country’s annual mean concentration of particulate matter (atmospheric dust) was 29 microgrammes per cubic metre.
“This exceeds the recommended maximum of 10 microgrammes per cubic meter”, said Mr. Mkasimongwa, who is currently a Fellow at a Taiwan university.
Poor air quality in Tanzania is largely attributed to industrial, transport and household emissions.
Scant data indicates that Morogoro has consistently high levels of air pollution.
In Dar es Salaam, the big sources include vehicles, high use of charcoal as fuel and poor waste disposal.
Within the country’s commercial hub, industries blamed for air pollution are cement and steel plants.
In Dar es Salaam, too, the concentration of atmospheric dust was 2.3 times the WHO annual air quality benchmark.
He called on the government and other parties to install air quality monitoring sensors.
He said although very few African countries have such facilities, our neighbour Uganda has made use of them.
The conversation was organized by Roots and Shoots, a nation-wide organization under the Jane Goodall Institute.
It emerged that 15 percent of deaths in Africa were due to indoor pollution in 2017. The figure went up to 25 percent in 2019.
