The Distressed Environment

Mrs olatayo cooking at her house captured by our amateur photographer.
Women in  Mrs Olatayo category are among  the 85% of the Nigeria population without access to clean energy for cooking,for such  women  it is either they use traditional firewood cook stoves or buy expensive charcoal paired with kerosene for daily cooking,while this type of cooking is going on you can always see them with wet eyes as a result of the smoke,you would also always see them with burn skin,majority actually do not know that this type of cooking endangers their health beyond wet and burn skin,until they started having respiratory problems and some eventually die as a result of the overexposure to smokes from  polluting cooking methods
Inhaling smokes from cooking for 4.5 hours of exposure has been linked as equivalent to smoking 20 packs of cigarettes per day.

Even me as a writer of this blog never knew that  the open fire cooking methods practiced by our mothers cause  havocs beyond the burn we see on their skins and the wet eyes until  i was  made to see the implications of inefficient cooking in school.I used to visit my grandma often while i was a child and i remember vividly that her only method of cooking was the traditional three Stones firewood,It  was after I knew  the implications of her cooking  that I could comprehend the reason she died of lung disease  at a young age.
Looking at the table below showing the effects of smoking cigarettes on various body parts will make us understand why over 90,000 Nigerians die as a result of overexposure to smokes from cooking and lightening

Table showing the  effects of smoking as  extracted from Harry and Sophia Awortwi

Using Polluting fuels for  lightening and cooking in Nigeria is not only extremely on a high rate but the effects of bad environmental practices is killing majority but they could not see enough to understand, Alas! air  pollution would have been minimal if  households had access to stable  electricity supply,if there was no erratic power supply in the country women would have resorted to using an electric cooker....All over the country extreme air pollution from waste burning sites and cooking in the neighborhood poses life threat to millions of the people . As a writer of this blog i cannot stay at home in peace as there is no week i would be home and dangerous air fumes from my neighbors kitchen or from refuse burning site  wouldn't enter my living room,a living room i opened its windows to allow some  fresh air in and chase the indoor heat from the scorching sun away became polluted within some minutes as a result of  my neighbors actions and i would be forced to close the windows to avoid inhalation ...

Poverty is a problem,Lack of stable supply of electricity is an issue but Ignorance has also complicated the air pollution crisis in the country..If people actually understood the consequences of their actions on the environment and their health ,actions that pollute the environment would be minimized to some extent, people die of all sort of diseases in Nigeria and Africa today but most of this diseases are airborne.

In other to live sustainable,an alternative source of energy is needed. climate change education is also  needed ,the government  need to support clean cook stove   and rural electrification programs,
the government also need to  formulate strict environmental policies against the burning of refuse around households

 Hands of everyone  including NGOs,Entrepreneurs,Private Organizations must be on deck to solve the menace.



Drop your comments below...let us know  how the dangerous environmental practices in the country is affecting you?
meanwhile we are available for collaborations that would widen the reach of our  work on environment and energy...