Towards world environmental health day.
On 26th
September 2017 the whole world will join hand to celebrate the World environmental
health day. Many of us we tend to commingle these two terms environmental
health and environmental at large generally Environmental health encompasses
the assessment and control of those environmental factors that can potentially
affect health but environment is the totality of what surround a humanbeing
biotic and abiotic matters. This year theme is Indoor and outdoor air quality choice of the theme is connoted to
with the emphasis given by WHO director general who cemented on the necessity
of air quality march 2017,thus WHO
stated that poor quality of air affects more than 80% of the worlds population
and microbial pollution is a key element of indoor air pollution. It is caused
by hundreds of species of bacteria and fungi, in particular filamentous fungi
(mould),growing indoors when sufficient moisture is available. On the other
side ambient (out door air quality) in both cities and rural areas was
estimated to cause 3 million premature death world wide (WHO 2012 fact sheet).According
to thee WHO international agency for Research cancer (IARC) ambient air is
marked to be carcinogenic if not well managed and controlled thus it is the air
quality which may pose cardiovascular and respiratory perturbations risks.
In Tanzania Morogoro
is the only municipality reporting to the WHO and has high levels of
particulate matter contributing to poor air quality (WHO 2014 fact sheet) .The require standard by WHO for particulate matter
(PM) with diameter of 2.5 microns should
not exceed 10 micrometer/m3 and 20 micrometer/m3 for PM with 10 microns.
At this juncture
with have seen the necessity of having this theme regarding air quality
especially in Tanzania where we have the Environmental Management regulation for
air quality standards of 2007 which is still not having much teeth to make it function
better and we are also on a radar toward the medium economy country with a lot
of industries which will also pollute our ambient air. Moreover the number of environmental
law breaches will increase since there is no a landed description which has
pinpointed the way to manage pollution in conjunction to the projection of middle
economy country. Toward the environmental day Tanzania has to make sure that
all the required standards for air quality standards are well informed and followed,
with the increase of enforcers to the carrier I mean Environmental health
officer (EH0).
Some countries
like Malawi vehicles pays pollution fee
which is the polluter pay fee which evert the externality to some extent we
have also to initiate some of the effective means which will make and ensure
the air quality of standard so that the
health of the individuals is well protected
for better developed Tanzania as we move towards middle economy country.
VITA VIVENDA