Oxford J. Learners Dictionary in it 7th
edition defined environment as natural world in which people exist while
environmental is about the natural world, its condition in which people,
animals and plants live. While R.K JAIN and SUNIL.S RAO also defined
environment as all those things or structure that have very close and intimate
relationship with man, his domain. An environment is the surroundings in which
man lives and works.
Man himself is part of environment and
environment is also part of man the only different between man and the
environment is only that man can move away by man, it can only be altered by
ma, the biological components
The environment is only friendly with man that
is friendly with his environment.
2.1
MAN AND HIS CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT
The both of JAIN R.K and SUNIL S RAO classified
environment into two, the natural environment and cultural environment.
1. Natural
environment include various element like location and forms water bodies
climates soil mineral deposits, natural vegetation, forest and wildlife.
Climate is the most significant of all the above elements of natural
environment. All these mentioned factors provided by natural and man has to
utilized all these resources and ensuring that is coming generation will not
suffer for want of these resources.
2. Cultural environment – comprises of manmade
features and talents. Human skilled applied the natural environment and
surroundings constitute the sphere of cultural land scope would imply a
complete substitution of the features of the original made features. However
there were still certain areas on the earth where man has affected no change to
natural land scope. Similarly there are certain areas which have not completely
replaced by man, time and place are very important in government, density and
distribution of population. Man has not been able to export all the part of the
world.
Natural environment
as it is given in its original form requires certain adjustment or changes in
different way and thus produce an environment or surroundings which is entirely
his own creation.
The natural environment is shared equally by
man and animal man alone can have a cultural environment. Other example of
cultural may be machinery transportation arrangement, educational institution,
organizational comprises public health and skills of people.
The continued development of science and
technology in nearly all fields human interest is an example of cultural man
has developed but man has not developed cultural on an equal basis in all
lands.
Human activities are depends upon not only
natural environment but also upon cultural environment. The rate of human’s
factors in the development of cultural environment must be under estimated. The
capacity of a country to support its people depends upon the human factors.
Human’s resources are the most precious of resources; their physical and
religious feelings affected the development of cultural environment to a
considerable degree. Education is a means of development normal intelligence of
human beings, professor LAWAL said highly educated human beings are able to
exploit their natural resources in the efficient manner at a low cost on
account of their application of science and technology to the development of
resources.
The productivity and therefore the wealth of a
country are closely related to the manner in which it able to direct, utilized
and organized its resources.
Finally, in any given region, the life of man,
his economic activities, his behavior, social custom, health and habits is not
an accident but is a product of environment, both natural and cultural. The
determinant of life is the human struggle to round his environment to suit his
requirements.
2.2
MEANING
OF ENVIRONMENT DEGRADATION
Environment
degradation is the state or situation in which all mans resources factors lost
their lost their natural qualities and respect and the respect of other people.
Man has been trying to advance since ages affecting environment in the process.
Due to high tale raking power of nature, the disturbance up to a certain level
got absorbed. But later with the rise in agricultural production, urbanization
and modern technology, human interference with environment clubbed with the
rapid multiplication of human population, a stage has reached where nature has
been unable to sustain this ever growing pressure through its capacity for
self-stabilization the government and community neglect and disregard of
environment may result in;
I.
Large scale land degradation
II.
Deforestation
III.
Extensive pollution of rivers and
water bodies
IV.
Large scale atmospheric pollution in
cites and industrial location
V.
Depletion of ground water level and
deterioration of ground water quality.
VI.
Extracting of great number of plants
and animals
VII.
Climate change
VIII.
Rapid depletion of natural resources
IX.
Rise in sea water level
X.
Global warming
XI.
Photo chemical smog
2.3
REASON
FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION
Man
is the architect of own environment he is free to alter their environment at
will this is because, man has to search for resources to fetch his daily needs
this coupled with his desired for suitable and accomondable environment. Other
activities of man that promote environment degradation as lighted by R.K JAIN
and SUNIL S.RO include the followings;
I.
The economic and population growth
that has put great pressure on consumption of water, energy, biological
resources
II.
Government has not care to ensure
sustainable development to meet increased demand of water and energy e.t.c the
appropriate technologies were not also adopted for the purpose
III.
Nobody cared to appropriately reflect
the costs of environmental degradation in market price and the true nature of
the natural resources have also not been reflected in the national income
IV.
There has been failure on part of
nation in ignoring the long term consequence of development activities
V.
Failure to recognize that our economic
system, our health and our life style in this part of the world depends on the
continued adequate functioning ecological system.
It has to be
understood clearly that the availability of natural goods and services is
controlled by hydrological cycle, biological diversity and functioning of
ecosystem.
2.4
ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION AND DEGRADATION
Pollution is the inevitable generation of waste
streams from the production and consumption of anything pollution directly
impacts the quality of the receiving medium such as air, water, and soil or
electromagnetic spectrum, and when this impaired medium acts upon a receptor
[allonsmitt and Rhoda sam, 2004]. The pollution are as a result from pollution
which are chemical physical or biological agents that exert undesirable effect
on human health, the air we breathe, the water we drink the food we consume and
the land the live on are all contaminated with one or other way form a
pollutants. This environmental deterioration, by man can be attributable to
three major causative factors these include, over population, is the increase
in population demand more food and land three major things that are limited on
earth. To increase food production either more efficient methods should be use,
exerting more pressure on the limited cultivable area, or more land should be
devoted for agricultural purpose. Generally the creation of the new agriculture
land is being achieve either by converting the forests, the man carbon –
dioxide sinks which protect the world from a global warming effects or by
depriving man of land, that he uses for other purpose
Man count on the synthetic biocide to overcome
crop losses due to pest and relies on chemical fertilizers to boost the crop
yield farmers who used to grow on crop a year, now have opted to cultivate as
many as three or more these practice have resulted in increased yield, soil
degradation, nutrient development, water pollution by plant nutrient and
contamination of the total environment with pesticides. Pesticides all chemical
are potential contaminants of air water and feed.
Just like we know that human needs are never
rending, discovery or new products and product of the need luxuries to suit the
changing life style are accomplished by the process or industrialization. It is
also they to the processing or manufacturing of intermediate chemical and
end-products as well. The production and processing steps in industries unit
often result in the wastage of 1-10% of quality of parent chemicals. The
present loss of course determined by the physic – chemical properties of the products.
Normally control measures chemicals may also alter the environment through
spill during their use, transportation or disposal.
Williams Ojo [2002] agreed that every industry
associated with an emission of one type or other of pollutants or potential
pollutants directly or indirectly. Industries are not only the responsible for
the pollution if air but also for the contamination of water, the quality of
water spent is unassuming large.
Every process on the earth need water the
universal solvent, industry’s consume a lot of it the untreated affluent by
industrial facility are primarily responsible for the water problems.
All these factors discussed namely,
urbanization and over population are increasing amount of waste generated by
these three phenomenal undoubtedly degrade the quality of land, water, air and
food thereby threatening health, of human and animal.
2.5
DEGRADATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
Abetment plan to reduce plant emission and to
reduce vehicle exult emission to restore air quality.
-
To treat all existing and proposed
drinking water supply system by induction of meaningful public drinking water
standard
-
A waste disposal effort for solid
waste disposal and to integrate solid and liquid waste disposal
-
A family planning and population
dynamics
-
Urban improvement method to develop
basic date sufficient to establish human level of tolerance for crowding conjunction,
noise, odours and specific human endurance data for general stress
-
A time scheduled program in needed establish
human safety level for synthetic material. The general use of any synthetic
material or chemical the prohibited until approved by the department of health
education and welfare to initiate comprehensive program for identification of
health and safety hazard associated with the use of appliances, clothing food
etc.
-
Radiation control effort through the
developmental research to protect workers and public from the harmful radiation
level.
-
Occupational diseases and safety
protection by laws needs to be enacted
BROAD
BASIC STEPS
-
Establish a surveillance and warnings
program which will through basic research identify current and potential
problems and determine the effect of these problems on men, thus giving the
consigned department, a continue supply of scientific knowledge necessary to
protect, men from environmental injury aesthetic insult.
-
Establish an environmental design
program which will establish criteria and dry level standard for individual
hazard an combination of hazard under varying collection of geography,
population, economy and technology
-
Establish a technological development
program using contract with industries in conjunction with departmental
activities and grant to institution so as to bring about the technological
improvement necessary to reach desirable environment quality levels.
-
Establish an inter-state government
compliance program to option comprehensive plans and action consistent with
natural goals and objectives
2.6
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE TO ESTABLISH ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION SYSTEM ARE
-
A
nationwide surveillance system for identifying the level of pollutant and
component of pollutant in air, water, soil.
- Establish criteria
for industrial waste combine with chemical which are discharge in to air,
water, and soil.
- Initiation on
comprehensive environmental health plan by state and local government.
- Creation of
permanent technical assistant central unit which can provide multi disciplining
team of specialist to be available to state and local government at their
request to aid in planning and implementing environmental health programs.
- Determination of
man power requirement necessary to adequately supply both public and private
sectors means for environmental program operation and the means of supplying
such needs.
- Establishment of an
integrate efforts for health education and general education to create public
understanding of its environmental and increased awareness of the individual
and social responsibility to reference it all.
- To create a council
of ecological advisors to provide an overview to assessment of activities in
both private and public sectors affecting environmental changes, and to advise
on critical environmental health risk/benefit decision and shaping the national
policy environmental management.
- Develop urban and
rural model codes are suggest standard for prevention and control of various
sources of noise in the environment.
- Establish facility
for large scale, long term health related studies in human ecology as well as
family planning.
2.7
WATER POLLUTION
Water is essential to all forms of life surface
of the earth measures, 5000 millions heaters in area 20%
of this area is land and the rest 80% is all covered by
water. Nothing could survive on earth without water. 70%
of human’s body weight is made up of water.
The direct and indirect cause of pollution of
surface rivers, wet land, water surface ground, water and costar area have been
discoursed earlier there is need to enhanced reuse of treated sewage and
industrial waste water before final discharged to water bodies promote R&D
in development of low cost technologist for sewage treatment at different
scale. Conservation and keeping up of good quality of water are of prior
importance, since water has a natural resources is ‘limited’ in a scene,
because of the estimated oil million cubic kilometer of water on earth, about
98 million cubic kilometers of 97% is on
constrained in the ocean as salt water.
An
additional 3mckl of salt water is buried understand of removing 2.5% which make up the world total supply of
fresh water some 22mkm is frozen in the polar ice caps and in glaciers these
quantities [98mckl of salt water 22mckl of salt water frozen into ice and 3mckl
of salt water underground] account practically for all the earth water.
However, the remaining small quantity of water estimated at 33, 400ms provided
the water supply vital for life on the earth.
Man
has polluted much this limited quantity of water with sewage industrial waste
and wide way of synthetic chemicals, moreover the rainfall on its way down to
the earth [each year about 900ms of water fall on the earth land surface]
brings down the air pollutant by either dissolving the soluble chemical eg So2,
h2 so4 by physically bringing down the particulate contaminant eg lead. India
receive about 1400 to 6000 cm3. The sector-wise use pertain in India is
agriculture [96%] domestic [36%] and industries [1%]. A recent analysis suggest that 70%
of all available water in India is polluted the water pollution are
categorized into 8 major type.
i.
Oxygen demanding waste
ii.
Disease causing agent
iii.
Synthetic organic compound
iv.
Plant nutrient
v.
Inorganic chemical and mineral substance
vi.
Suspended solids
vii.
Radioactive waste
viii.
Thermal discharge
2.8 SOIL
POLLUTION
Similarly
the immediate and deeper cause of soil pollution has been considered above.
There is need to develop and implement for cleaning up re-existing toxic and
hazardous waste dump and reclamation of such land for future sustainable use
promote organic farming of traditional crop varieties through research in an
dissemination of techniques for reclamation of land with prior exposure to
agricultural chemicals, facilitating marketing of organic produce. Develop and
implement strategies for re-cycle, re-use and final environmental disposal of
splashes waste.
2.9 AIR POLLUTION
Air constitute about 80%
of man’s daily intake by weight, human being breath nearly 22000 times a
day inhaling about 16kg of oxygen. Thus pollution of air may have profound
health effect and other consequences the potions of the air exhaled by human
beings differ in it composition in as much as the oxygen is reduced by about 4% carbon dioxide level is increased by
3.5% aqueous vapor increase to 5% in addition some filarial material
bacterial living in the nose, mouth and throat may contaminate the atmosphere.
Air pollution may have adverse impact
on human health as well the health of other living entities, man-made heritage
and life support system such as global climate. Depending upon the life of
pollutant, the location of the surface as home stead local region or global;
level at time, interval from air pollution are emission from the use of fossil
energy and other industrial process and some consumption activities like noise,
smoking, car combustion vaporization are the chief sources of air pollution
besides fractional force
2.10 IMPACT OF
ENVIROMENTAL DEGRADATION AND POLLTION ON HEALTH
The impact of environment degradation
and pollution health which need to be tackles both national and global this
planet worth living and securing future millennium generations
1. Global climate change: green house
gases are increasing in atmosphere at alarming proportion due to ill practice
in use of land increase in energy with fossil fuel with undue regard to
environmental. As a result earth climate is changing [global warming means
surface temperature is increasing average sea level rising and glaciers
retreating], there is need to arrest further releases of green house process of
global warming is very slow due to large residence time of gases in atmosphere
high thermal residence. Human health will be affected seriously due to global
warming because of increase in heat stress mortality and vector borne disease
forest will shrink agricultural production will decrease and fresh water
availability will also decrease due to global warming. Major burden will fall
on developing country like Nigeria because of their institution and financial,
which is not that strong.
2. Loss of biological resources and
biodiversity: this is the loss of animal and plants species resulting directly
from human activities and its interface with essential ecological functions
[regulation of water runoff, control of soil erosion, assimilation of waste and
purification of water cycle of carbon and other nutrient] loss of biological
diversity will result in lessening of food supplies, source of wood etc
increase demand for biological resources. The government of Nigeria is making
mistake is not being able to recognize true value of biodiversity and failures
to regulate use of biological resources.
3. Depletion of stratospheric ozone:
there has been tremendous increase in use of stratospheric chlorine and bromine
by human activities through production and emission of chloroflucarbon [which
is used as aerosol propeller, solvents, refrigerants and so no] halos and
carbon tetractiloride, methyl chloroforms etc the depletion in ozone would
result in ground level ultraviolet radiation which can cause adverse
consequences for human health [such as skin diseases and eye cataracts etc]. it
can also result into loss of productivity affected air quality and acceleration
degradation.
4. Fresh water crisis: Williams, Sojo
[2002] agreed that water pollution is causing millions of preventable death
every year; he said one third of population in the world is living under
moderate or serve water stress and have no access to adequate sanitation.
Growing population high standard of living and urbanization are increasing
water demands. Water being a social good and not economic one, lot of water is
wanted; particular in irrigation surface and underground water quality is under
degradation. Inadequate sanitation is major concern for human health while poor
land use is responsible for flash loads and pollution of coastal and marine
ecosystems.
5. Desertification, drought and land,
named agricultural lands lose all or part of their productivity every year due
to land degradation process. Ecosystems are greatly affected by population
growth and need for food production in ecological fragile arid and semiarid
lands.
6. Forest degradation and destruction:
tropical forest is being cleared every year. Population growth and demand for
forest products are conversion of forest lands to agricultural and other
development. Decrease forest cover will result in loss of soil fertility and
increase in soil erosion from deforestation area.
7. Marine environment and resources
degradation over fishing, inadequate waste management of land leveling off of
marine fish production. This would result in coastal area unsuitable for
recreation food production loss of coral reefs and mangroves, cases of illness
will increase due to consumption of contaminated fish, marine fisheries
production will also decrease.
8. Release of persistent organic
pollutants: these are the chemical substance, having wide range of uses,
persistent organic pollutants resist natural breakdown process and bio
accumulates in fatty tissues at different level of food chain. Being
semi-volatile, persistent organic pollutants where in the world, even in the
places where they were not used. These are used in persistent organic
pollutants can lead to cancer and other diseases accumulation of absolute stock
flies of pesticides and toxic chemical can cause teaching of these chemical
into the soil containing water resources.
2.11 ENVIRONMENTAL
CONTROL AND PROTECTION
The pollutants can either be isolated
of the point of release or its production and converted for another purpose
thus, keeping it within the restricted areas if chemical is highly toxic and
not useful, then its release into the environment has to be blocked and the
chemical be destroyed by specific processes in restricted area. A systematic
pollution control would be with a search for an alternative for a process or a
substance in use.
1. Chemical
substitution – the substitution of toxic chemical with another less toxic one
can eliminate the former right from the beginning of the manufacturing process.
2. Releases –
releases of toxic substance into the environment from a manufacturing unit or
from usage pattern can also be controlled. Toxic emission can be reducing by
redesigning equipment or by changing operational procedures.
3. Control gaseous
pollution – the emission of carbon dioxide [CO2] need to be controlled in view
of the possible onset of disastrous global warming process there are three
possible solutions to the problem created by and the co2 emission they are
-
Disposal of the CO2 liberated into atmosphere
-
Reduction to the use of fossil fuels
-
Controlling the entry of CO2 into the
atmosphere by collecting it at the point of entry and on disposing it off
safety elsewhere the only way of disposal that is now and always working is the
collection of CO2 by forest and other green tillage, strip cropping correct
fertilizer application practices, tile drainage and proper management of
livestock manures
Various control measures are the
harvesting of the adequate plants the sure of algaecides nutrient on activation
in the lake, artificial oxygenation of the button of the sediments, increasing
water flushing or circulation rates and artificial manipulation of in – lake
biological communities.
4. Noise – whenever
community or occupational noise happens to be a major problem, reduction at the
source should be primary attempted other options available includes the
isolation of the population from the source of the noise, reduction of the
duration of exposure and equipping onset to have personal protection.
5. Waste water
treatment – whenever water supplies are disposed of offer domestic use or after
industrial processes to which they were primarily utilized. Thus they need to
be treated to remove all the different contaminant embedded in them such a
process of removal is laborious and should be done in an organized way. A
systematic process of waste water treatment would include in general:
I.
Preliminary treatment
II.
Primary treatment
III.
Secondary treatment
IV.
Activated sludge process
V.
Biological filtration
VI.
Sludge treatment
VII.
Polishing of effluents
VIII.
Water reclamation
6. Pollution
abetment – pollution directly impacts the quality of the receiving medium i.e. air,
water, soil or electromagnetic spectrum and when this impaired medium acts upon
a receptor, also impacts receptors, typically, ecosystems have some natural
capacity to assimilate pollutant and the ecosystem. In short it is cheaper to
reduce one emission of pollution than to migrate it after generation or to
treat the receiving medium or reception the impact of pollution may also
differentially impact poor or women or children or developing regions. Which
may have relatively low contribution to generation and accordingly the cost and
benefit of abatement may have important implications for equity.
7. Transport and
fate – if a chemical have come to the point of being released into the
environmental, then it should be prevented from entering the environmental compartments,
it may be recovered by recycling, it may be store and contained in a special
dumping area but that is not the end because that carries with it a possibility
if seeping through and contaminating the ground water as well in real life,
different approaches exist and even applied for different pollutants. Sometimes
one procedure ably control all pollutants released by a process but more often
several options of control needs to be exercised to have an effective control
over all the pollutants.
2.12 THE ROLES OF
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH OFFICER IN ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND ITS IMPLICATION
ON HUMAN AND ANIMAL HEALTH
Environmental health officer are among
the professionals, environmental workers trained to remove and prevent
detrimental effects on the physical, mental and social well-being of man in
this environment in other to identify pending or springing problems there are
of jurisdictions among their roles are;
a. Dynamics –
environmental health officer should be dynamics on their professional fields,
they should be trained, attend seminars, modulations from time to time to
improve their knowledge on their environment and tailor the necessary solutions
to the identified environmental problem before its implication. As increased in
population and increasing demands of each person and corresponding increase in
waste associated with decreasing raw materials. Resources are serious threats
to survival of human race. That is enhancing environmental health officers is
essential to harmonize patterns of individual behaviour with the requirements
of environmental conservation. This would minimize the demands placed on the
monitoring and enforcement regions. Environmental education is the principal
means of enhancing such awareness. Both among the public at large, and among
focused groups.
b. There is need for
close regular inspection and monitoring of industries by environmental health
officers to regularize industrial chemicals waste disposal – chemical
substitution machine updating adequate and proper waste disposal both at
industries and domestic level will definitely protect the environmental from,
pollution and degradation.
c. The environmental
health officers must be ready to accept and embark on integration programmers
with other related field such as agricultural, ecological etc. this will
promote wider coverage and detection of environmental problems before they
become hazardous to the community at large.
d. Promote stiff
environmental protection legislation to reduce the level of environmental
pollution through industrial and domestic waste disposal including chemical
substitution.
2.13
ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING
This is described as the process and activities that need
to take place to characterize and monitor the quality of environment
.Environmental monitoring is use in the preparation of environmental impact
assessment as well as in many circumstances in which human activities carry a
risk of harmful effect on the natural environment.
All strategies and program as reasons and
justification which are often design to establish a current status of the
environment or to establish trends in environmental parameters in all cases the
result of monitoring will be reviewed, analyses strategically and published
.They design of a monitoring program must therefore have regard to the final
use of data before monitoring starts.
2.14. DESIGN OF ENVIRONMENTAL
MONITORING PROGRAM.
Water
quality monitoring is of litter use without a clear and unambiguous definitions
of the reasons for the monitoring and objectives that will satisfy almost all
monitoring (except perhaps remote sensing) is in some part invasive of the
environment under study and extensive and poorly planned monitoring carries a
risk a damage to the environment. This may be a critical consideration in
wilderness areas or when monitoring very rare organisms or these that are
averse to human presence. Some monitoring techniques such gull netting fish to
estimate population, can be very demanding, at lost to the local population and
can also degrade public trust in scientist carrying out the monitoring.
Almost
all mainstream environmentalism monitoring projects from part of an overall
monitoring strategy or research field, and these field and strategies are
themselves derives from high levels objectives or aspiration of an
organization. Unless individual monitoring project strategic treatment, the
results are unlikely to be published and the environmental understanding
produced by monitoring will be lost.
2.5 USE OF REMOTE SENSING AND GIS
IN ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION DETECTION AND MONITORING
Land
covers are fundamental variables that impact on and link many parts of the
global environment. Degradation in land cover can have far reaching
ramification at local regional and global levels thus pattern of land cover
must be understood at a range of spatial and temporal scales with a view to
characterizing and predicting the potential environment impacts. This work
focused on the degradation of land cover occurring within the lake naiveté
basin in Kenya. The area has undergone rapid land use transportation since
independent to date leading to land cover changes. This in turn compromise the
natural resources base, hence the need to monitor and avail reliable data for
decision making on sustainable land use, the research objective were three –
fold to determine the probable deriving forces of land map the magnitude, rate,
nature and spatial distribution of the land cover degradation that had occurred
in the area and to establish the trend and relationship between the natural resources
base and the land use both remote sensing and bais techniques were employed to collect the pertinent data needed for
fulfilling the research objective.
2.16
OIL SPILLAGE
An oil spillage is the release of a liquid
petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially marine areas, due to
human activities and is a form of pollution. The term is usually applied to
marine oil spills, may be due to release of crude oil from tankers, off shore
platforms as well as spills of refined petroleum products heavier fuels used by
larger ships such as bunkers fuel or the spill of any oily refuse or waste oil.
2.17
IMPACT OF OIL SPILLAGE ON ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION
Oil spillage can
contaminate and poison waters of the country and destruction of vegetation and agricultural
land by oil spills which occur during petroleum operation, but since the
inception of the oil industry in Nigeria, more than twenty five years ago there
has been no concise and effective effort on the part of government industries.
Oil spillage has a major impact on the
ecosystem into which is release and may constitute ecocide tracts of the
mangrove forests which are especially susceptible to oil [mainly because it is
stored in the soil and re-released annually during inundation] has been destroyed.
An estimated 5-10% of Nigerian mangrove
ecosystem has been wiped out either by settlement or oil spills in populated
areas often spread out over a wide areas destroying crops and agricultures
through contamination of ground water and soil the consumption of dissolved
oxygen by bacteria feeding on the spilled hydrocarbons also contributes to the
death of fish.
2.18
NATURAL DISASTERS
This is a major adverse event resulting from
natural processes of the earth example includes flood volcanic eruption earth
quakes, tsunamis and other geologic processes. A natural disaster can cause
loss of life or properties damage and typically leaver some economic damage in
it wakes the severity of which dependent on the affected population resistance
or ability to recover.
OIL SPIILLAGE
Oil
spillage is the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment,
especially marine areas, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The
term is usually applied to marine oil spills, where oil is released into ocean
or coastal waters, but spill may also occur on land. Oil spills may be due to
release of crude oil from tankers, off shores platforms, drilling rings and
wells, as well as spills of refined petroleum products [such as gasoline
diesel] and their refined petroleum, heavier fuels used by large ships such as
bunker fuel, or the spill of any oily refuse or waste oil. Spilt oil penetrates
into the structure of the plumage of birds and then for animals, reducing its
insulating ability, and making them more vulnerable to temperature fluctuating
and much less buoyant in the water. Clean up and recovery from an oil spill is
difficult and depends upon many factors, including the type of oil spilled, the
temperature of the water[affecting evaporation and biodegradation], and the
types of shorelines and beaches involved. Spills may take weeks, months or even
years to clean up.
Oil
spills at sea are generally much more damaging than those on land, since they
can spread for hundreds of nautical miles in a thin oil slick which can cover
beaches with a thin coasting of oil. This can kill sea birds, mammals,
shellfish and other organisms it coast, oil spills on land are more readily
containable if a make shift earth dam can be rapidly bulldozed around she spill
site before most of the oil escapes, and land animals can avoid the oil more
easily.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION LAWS
The
existing laws and regulation in relation to environmental protection in Nigeria
can be classified into two categories
-
The pre – 1988 laws
-
The post – 1988 laws
Both are laws which
in their specific provisions prohibited certain activities or conduct which are
detrimental to the wholesomeness and safety of the environmental. Also the laws
specify impositions and varying sensations for violation or non – compliance
with the provision in the laws
a. The
pre 1988 laws
-
Public health ordinance cap
109,1958,1963
-
Criminal code sub-section 245-247
-
Petroleum decree, 1969
-
Nigeria Atomic energy commission
decree 1979
-
Explosive Act, 1964
-
Factories Act, 1987 etc
b. The post 1988
laws
-
Harmful waste [special criminal provision etc]
decree No. 42,1988
-
Federal environmental protection agency decree
No. 58, 1988
-
National environmental protection [pollution
abatement in industries] 1991 sub-section 1-9
-
National environmental protection [management
of solid and hazardous wastes] regulation. 1991 sub-section 1-5
-
Environmental impact assessment decree No. 86,
of 1992
-
Environmental health practice regulation 2007.
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