Kampala, Jinja town residents breathing themselves to the grave

Kampala. For several years now, Flora Nantume, who operates a kiosk on the Kampala-Jinja highway, has suffered persistent flu and cough because of the contaminated air in the city.

“I got tired of treating the cough and flu because I cannot stop the dust from blowing over into my shop,” Nantume says, adding that she only worries for her two children of three and six years.
Nantume, just like thousands of Kampala City dwellers, are oblivious of the contamination in the dust and fumes generated by vehicles, bad roads, poor drainage and poor disposal of waste, among others.
In a September 2016 report, the World Health Organisation (WHO) ranks Kampala as one of the most polluted cities on the African continent after Kaduna in northern Nigeria.

Dubbed: “Ambient air pollution: Global assessment of exposure and burden of the disease”, the report cites air pollution as the biggest environment risk to health, contributing to one in every nine deaths annually.
The WHO report, whose database covers more than 3,000 cities across the world, also indicates that nearly eight million people die of air pollution globally every year.
For Uganda, the report indicates that 8,000 people die annually due to conditions and diseases linked to ambient or outdoor air pollution.

This coincides with a recent study conducted by scientists at the Department of Medicine at the Makerere University College of Health Sciences in collaboration with other foreign universities.
Titled: “The state of ambient air quality in two Ugandan cities: A pilot cross-sectional spatial assessment,” the report, for its findings, mapped out the most and less polluted areas around Kampala and Jinja.
It says Kampala city suburbs, including Nateete, Masaka Road, Rubaga, Mengo, Nansana, Najjanankumbi, Lusaze, Mutundwe and sections of Entebbe Road, have the worst air quality, whereas leafy city suburbs such as Kyanja, Kumabonga, Naguru, Kololo, Kiwatule, Mbuya, Nakasero and Muyenga, have better air quality.
Other areas with undesirable air quality were cited as Kampala Industrial Area, Lungujja, Kulabimbiro, and Kawala-Bwaise road.

Conducted between June 30 and July 27, 2014, using real-time aerosol monitor DUSTTRACK II-8530 at 18 sites (15 in Kampala and 3 in Jinja), the study measured the concentration of particulate matter, one of the pollutants, in the air.
Particulate matter refers to the microscopic solid or liquid matter suspended in the earth’s atmosphere.
Dr Bruce J. Kirenga, the lead investigator, says particulate matter are basically particles in the air which are less than a 10 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3) but once breathed, they can cause inflammation in the major organs of the body like lungs, heart, brain and blood.
“The particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter are very dangerous as they can penetrate deep into tissues,” he says.

The WHO recommends an annual mean of particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns of less than 10 µg/m3 and a 24-hour mean of 25 µg/m3.
According to the Dr Kirenga study, Kampala’s stood at 138.6 micrograms per cubic metre, higher than Jinja at 99.3 micrograms per cubic metre.
The findings of the study demonstrate presence of high particulate matter concentrations and low gas phase air pollutant levels in Kampala and Jinja between June 30 and July 17, 2014.

“The observed mean particulate matter concentration of 132.1 micrograms per cubic metre (5.3-fold above the limit defined by WHO) across all monitoring sites in the currents study is comparable with the mean particulate matter concentration of 104.9 micrograms per cubic metre described in an earlier single site pilot study from a district in Kampala,” reads part of the report.

As far as the gases are concerned, nitrogen dioxide pollution levels were highest around the industrial areas, at 156 micrograms per cubic metre, followed by residential areas with unpaved roads (152.6 micrograms per cubic metre) and commercial land use areas (129.4 micrograms per cubic metre).

High commercial activities such as trading; small-scale manufacturing and high traffic characterised most of the areas mapped out during the study. The air samples were picked using diffusion tubes tied around poles at the various sites.
Dr Kirenga, who doubles as the director of the Lung Institute at Mulago, says air quality varies depending on weather conditions and times of the day, citing dusty conditions during a dry season and during night.
Explaining the health burden, Dr Kirenga says people with already existing heart and respiratory conditions like asthma are most at risk of air pollution.

“If you already have a heart disease, [or] a lung disease, then pollution will affect you more. The second groups of people are the children,” he adds.

“Children are more affected due to many reasons; they need a lot of air because they breathe very fast, and their lungs are not mature to have strong immunity,” Dr Kirenga explains.
He says results of a yet-to-be published study on the effects of air pollution on lungs reveals that children living in Buwenge Sub-county in Jinja District have better lungs compared to their counterparts in Kampala.

“The findings of this study, although not yet reviewed, indicate that rural children have better lungs compared to urban children and we think this is due to air quality, which is damaging the children’s lungs slowly by slowly,” he says.
Unlike Jinja, which is an industrial town, the scientist says other places like Mbarara or Kabale may have better air quality.

He observes that the greyish appearance in the sky in Kampala is normally a composition of particles and the same applies to smoke from home kitchens.
Air samples taken to the United States by the team for analysis indicted that most of the air pollution was dust picked from Kampala suburbs.

“There must be deliberate efforts to clean up air by reducing traffic emissions, stop open burning of waste/garbage and pave all roads on top of building air quality monitoring equipment,” he says.

The WHO report indicates 94 per cent of deaths are due to non-communicable diseases – notably cardiovascular diseases, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer.

Out of the 7,989 deaths registered in Uganda, about 3,141 were due to acute lower respiratory disease, 192 Chorionic Pulmonary diseases, 126 lung cancers, 1,624 Ischemic Heart Disease and 2,905 are stroke-related.

Another study conducted by Dr Amin Tamale Kiggundu, a lecturer at the Department of Architecture at Makerere University, indicates that the main drivers of air pollution in Uganda are transport, open-waste burning, biomass energy for domestic use (cooking and lighting), bush fires, mining, industrialisation, as well as rapid urbanisation.
Dubbed: “Capabilities and gaps assessments of urban air quality management,” the study indicates that about 75 per cent of air pollution in Uganda is due to transport-related activities.

Indeed, Dr Kirenga says, aging cars and vehicles whose combustion is incomplete when parked with their engines running emit gas pollutants such as carbon monoxide.

According to Uganda Bureau of Statistics, in 2008 there was a 30 per cent increase in motor vehicle registration.
Uganda’s current motor vehicle fleet is estimated at 800,000.
More than 70 per cent of these vehicles are registered in Kampala. Between 1992 and 2004, the number of registered motor vehicles in Uganda increased from 53,000 to 247,000.

Mr Waiswa Ayazika, the director for Environment Monitoring and Compliance at the National Environmental Management Authority (Nema), says there are no regulations with regard to the age of motor vehicles and the majority of imported vehicles in the country are not fitted with catalytic converters that reduce carbon emissions.
He acknowledges that the Makerere University study assessing air quality in Jinja and Kampala is the only existent research on air quality in the country.

“We are just trying to acquire equipment of our own to start monitoring air quality but one thing you should understand is, for as long as we still have these old motor vehicles coming into the country, we might not succeed,” Mr Ayazika says.

He adds there is need for stringent regulation on the age of motor vehicles imported into the country.
“There must be an effort in planning to reduce congestion. Currently, there are few outlets into Kampala which lead to traffic jam and this is one of the leading contributors of air pollution,” he says.

Not yet industrialised
Mr Ayazika argues that Uganda is not yet a highly industrialised city but rather blames the air pollution on old age vehicles.

“We need as many roads which lead into the city to reduce congestion and ensure our roads are paved,” he says.
He says the motor vehicle inspection firm SGS, which has built a workshop in Kawanda, just outside Kampala, needs to include the aspect of measuring emissions by the vehicles. “People should be made to pay for their emissions,” he adds.

Already, he says the National Environment Policy, the National Environment and the Public Health Policy, which govern environmental compliancy, are in place.
“We are currently developing standards and regulations for air quality,” Mr Ayizika says.
On industries complying with the air quality parameters, Mr Ayazika says all the firms have to comply but also observes that due to poor planning, people have built in areas previously labeled as industrial parks.
In a recent interview, Mr Peter Kaujju, the Kampala Capital City Authority spokesperson, told Sunday Monitor that the authority is paving all pedestrian walkways in the city and has asked landlords in the city to also pave their verandahs.
He also revealed that the Kampala-flyover project to ease traffic congestion will begin this year.

Definition

Air pollution. Dr Bruce J. Kirenga, the lead investigator, defines air pollution as anything that can contaminate air or something that is in the air but not supposed to be part of it.
“Although, there more than 150 things which can contaminate air, there are six things known as criteria [main] pollutants,” he says. He says they include particulate matter, sulphur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), lead (Pb) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), which pose the greatest risks to human health.

8,000

The number of Ugandans who die annually due to conditions and diseases linked to ambient or outdoor air pollution.

The case for Kampala

Dr Bruce J. Kirenga, the lead investigator, says the level of air pollution in Kampala is well beyond the WHO recommended levels and is largely responsible for the increase in respiratory and cardiovascular diseases currently on the rise in the country.

Dr Kirenga says the levels of pollution in Kampala city residential areas of Kololo and Muyenga is low due to the paved tarmac roads that limit suspension of soil in the atmosphere.

“Based on our findings and observations in the current pilot study, we speculate that re-suspended dust and vehicular emissions are the primary sources of particulate matter in Kampala and Jinja and may also be significant contributors to air pollution in other African cities,” the report states.

However, Dr Kirenga says the public should not use the research findings to label some areas as inhabitable.
“There are variations, there are places that are bad and there are those ones which are not bad,” he says, adding, the study is not conclusive.

“I measured only 21 locations in Kampala but there are very many villages. In Nateete, I sampled a few villages and some villages were not sampled. So the scientific findings are not conclusive,” he notes.

What they say...

“If you already have a heart disease, [or] a lung disease, then pollution will affect you more. Children are more affected due to many reasons; they need a lot of air because they breathe very fast, and their lungs are not mature to have strong immunity”
Dr Bruce J. Kirenga, lead investigator

“We are just trying to acquire equipment of our own to start monitoring air quality but one thing you should understand is, for as long as we still have these old motor vehicles coming into the country, we might not succeed”
Mr Waiswa Ayazika, director for Environment, Nema

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