MANAGEMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH HAZARD IN THE OIL PRODUCING AREAS OF BAYELSA STATE: A CASE STUDY OF BRASS LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health as a state of complete physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being of individual and not merely the absence of diseases or infirmity (WHO, 1964). Ogbimi (2009) holds that an individual is affected by almost everything in the environment. Equally, health is the perfect state of the individual in his physical, mental, social and emotionally well being. Health is seen as an environmentally influenced state of well being, hence it becomes necessary to look at the health of people as directly influenced by their immediate environment. Environmental health is a branch of public health that is concerned with all aspect of the natural and physical environment which may affect human health. The World Health Organization (WHO) defined it as those aspects of the human body, (human health) and disease that are determined by factors in the environment (wikipedia, 2007).

The focus of environmental health has been the direct pathological agents and the effects in health and well being of the broad physical, psychological, social and aesthetic environment which include housing, urban development, land use and transportation. The scope of environmental health include hazardous materials, pollution, disaster, prehardness, food safety, waste management and occupational health. One aspect of interest to researchers is the environmental health as the impact of oil spills on the health of members in host communities where multinationals carry out huge oil drilling or exportation activities. An area with largest concentration of such facilities in the Niger Delta region in Nigeria. Alagoa (1999) and Ekiyor (2006) the Niger Delta covers 70, 000 km2 within wet lands. It is home to 20 million people and 40 dierent ethnic groups with diverse mangrove swamp forests, fresh water swamps, and low land rain forests. Dabbs (2006 however put it that the ecosystems as well as the individuals are at the receiving end of pollutants from oil spills and gas flares. Niger Delta has witnessed the poisoning of the waters of this country and destruction of vegetation and agricultural land by oil spills which occur during petroleum exploration. But since the discovery of the oil industry in Nigeria, more than thirty years ago, there has been no concerned and effective effort on the part of the government, let alone the oil operators to control environmental health hazards associated with the industry.

Sola (2002) expressed that in Lagos State today as well the riverine cities in Nigeria such as Bayelsa, the worst type of pollution is oil. In other words, he warned that potential pollution from the oil companies to land and water poses very serious problem to the oil producing areas. Estimate shows that 89 million barrels of petroleum were spilled into Niger Delta region between 1976 and 1996 (Nwilo, 2009). The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) puts the quantity of petroleum injected into the environment yearly at 2, 300 cubic meters of oil spills annually. These estimates raise grave concerns for the environmental health of host communities.