By Dominic Kirui
Nairobi, Kenya: On a sunny afternoon at Kihara Sub-County Hospital in the outskirts of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, Mary Wangeci walks into the hospital compound with her newborn baby boy for medical attention. The baby is underweight, and Wangeci says that he’s been sickly since his birth, eight days ago.
At the hospital, Mercy Gathoni who is the Nurse-in-Charge receives them and shows Wangeci to the hospital pediatrician. Wangeci who declined her photos taken is also having difficulty breathing and says that she has had the same issue since she was expecting her baby.
The baby is underweight as confirmed by the hospital’s pediatrician, and as experts explain, this is largely contributed by air pollution, even though there are no scientific tests that have been done on Wangeci or her baby to prove that as the exact cause of their ailments.
Wangeci who is a secondhand clothes dealer might have been exposed to air pollutants from vehicle emissions, burning waste and industrial emissions from the industries in Nairobi. The pollutants are called the particulate matter and are measured in micrometers and can either be 10 micrometers (PM10) or 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5).
PM2.5 is much tinier and can penetrate the human lungs and bloodstream, causing a number of diseases both respiratory and pulmonary, sometimes referred to as chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD).
Sammy Simiyu, a public health officer and the co-chair of the Health committee of the Nairobi Air Quality Working Group says that even though air pollution affects all ages, there are more vulnerable groups which include pregnant mothers, children, elderly and those with multiple comorbidities. They are more likely to be affected. As for pregnant mothers, it is because of their low immunity during pregnancy.
“If a mother is exposed to air pollution, you begin to see cases of low child birth weight, so it affects child development all the way from the mother’s womb. As such, these children have decreased lung function and also end up developing cardiovascular diseases; and you see even childhood cancers coming up,” he says.
According to Simiyu, it’s sad that we have to expose an unborn child to air pollution who has no idea what is happening.
“This goes on after birth, in their early childhood development, causing them chronic respiratory diseases and even the complex conditions at that particular time. And when they grow into their old age, you realize they have multiple conditions, most of which are attributed to this pollution before birth. So, in a nutshell, I can say that it affects the entire population, but it is sad and critical that we have to expose especially the unborn child,” Simiyu adds.
Wangeci and her family live in Gachie, which lies in the outskirts west of Nairobi, and towards the direction of the wind. As such, there is potential harm done by pollutants from the eastern side of the city where most of the pollution happens due to the location of the industrial estates and also the vehicular emissions that sum up and are blown by the wind towards the west.
Prof Augustine Afullo, the environmental health consultant at the Global Environmental and Occupational Health (GeoHealth) says that wind direction is always a factor when it comes to air pollution, as the wind determines where the pollutants will go and cause harm.
“Wind direction is a very major factor because pollution knows no bounds. And particularly for air, it’s worse, so you’ll find that whatever is released from one corner goes to the other corner. And that’s why even in city planning it is better that the direction where the wind is moving towards is where the industrial area is established; normally that’s supposed to be the better design of a city. But you know, as you’re hearing experts say Nairobi was an accidental city, so basically many things may not have been properly planned,” Prof Afullo says.
In February last year, GeoHealth in partnership with the University of Nairobi, Columbia University, Addis Ababa University, Makerere University, University of Rwanda, University of Southern California, and Colorado School of Public Health released a report presenting the results of a three-year air quality monitoring carried out in Nairobi.
The report, dubbed ‘The Air We Breathe Is Killing Us!’ indicated that there were higher levels of particulate matter in Nairobi than the WHO recommended levels. For instance, the air quality at James Gichuru Primary School in Dandora, East of the city, was bad; with children in the school exposed to the fumes coming from the city’s dumpsite.
The WHO guidelines on air pollution states that annual average concentrations of PM2.5 should not exceed 5 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3), while 24-hour average exposures should not exceed 15 µg/m3 more than 3 – 4 days per year.
According to Prof Afullo, areas next to the dumpsites and the industrial area have more toxic air, because of the emissions there, followed by the city center, contributed by the vehicular traffic and the emissions it produces as well.
“Using the e-samplers at the James Gichuru Primary School in Dandora, we recorded an annual mean of 35 µg/m3. The daily average can even go up to 100 µg/m3,” Prof Afullo said.
When the wind blows, the direction to which it does also affects the air quality in that direction, as recorded around Gigiri and Kitisuru where there are other air quality monitors mounted and showing unsafe air quality in those areas, even though not having heavy traffic nor industrial emissions and no dumpsites.
“In areas like Kitisuru and the UNEP area, you find about 8 to 10 micrograms per meter of particulate matter, which is still higher than the WHO recommended air quality standards. It is about what we call background pollutants that affect everybody living within the city before you go to the specifics,” Prof Afullo says.
He then adds that the studies they carry out as well as the data they produce will eventually go into helping people around the city make basic informed choices, including even choosing where they want to live in the city.
At the Kihara Hospital, Gathoni, the nurse in charge, says that even though she worked in a larger and busier hospital in western Kenya, she has seen more respiratory illnesses since she moved to her current station at Kihara hospital which is in the outskirts of Nairobi city.
“Even though that was a larger facility and the number of patients were many times higher than the ones we serve here, still the number of people especially children under five and those other vulnerable groups would be higher here,” she concludes.
This story was done in collaboration with Earth Journalism Network
