Air Quality Levels and Health Risk Assessment of Particulate Matters in Abuja Municipal Area, Nigeria

Abstract

This study focuses on assessing the health risk by particulate matter (PM) inhalation within the Abuja municipal area, Nigeria. Particulate matters (PM2.5 and PM10), HCHO and VOCs were collected by A handheld portable smart air quality detector BR-SMART-126. A hybrid single-particle Lagrangian integrated trajectory (HYSPLIT) model for backward trajectory was applied to tract the air flow (transportation) and potential sources. Health risk was estimated by comparing with the air quality index (AQI) stipulated by the World Health Organization (WHO). The result shows that the daily averaged concentrations of PM2.5 varied from 15.30 µg/m3 to 70.20 µg/m3. The top four most-polluted locations (Locations 10, 14, 17 and 18) of the twenty locations were found to be above the acceptable (25 µg/m3) AQI limit stipulated by WHO, which all fell far under the unhealthy AQI value index level. In general, business/commercial locations had the highest PM2.5 level followed by transport/market, offices/mixed use and residential. The results from the backwards trajectories show that the source of local particles for the four most-polluted locations is long-range air transport originating from the Atlantic Ocean. The results of the health-risk assessment implies that for PM2.5, the AQI varied from 73.2 to 280.8 in this assessment. Based on this, the population of workers within the business location are at health risk based on the relatively poor air quality in these areas—especially location 10 and 17. Based on these findings, it is recommended that the regulatory and enforcement agency needs to develop a more robust monitoring mechanism, regulations and enforcement. Furthermore, there is need for a national drive on renewable energy, clean energy for business/commercial district to help reduce fumes from generators and to form cleaner air initiatives in order to ensure a safe environment to live in as well as reduce particulate matters in the city.