Assessment of Perception/Awareness of Radiological Impacts of Some Artisanal, Active & Inactive Mines in Zamfara State

Abstract

Mining of minerals has caused huge environmental contaminations and grave health effects with little or no detailed evident pathways in recent times. The impacts range from unabated contamination through particulate radionuclide inhalation and ingestion, environmental degradation, worn-out of agricultural lands, increased poverty among inhabitant and increased toxic burden on biodiversity, summing up to a huge human health burden. To assess the perception and awareness of the inhabitants around mines being the stake holders in potential contamination and its adverse effect of exposure, observational data were collected through two separately structured questionnaires during identification of sample points between April 2015 and January 2016 across Gummi, Bukkuyum, Anka, Maru, Gusau, Tsafe and Zurmin Local Government Areas in Zamfara State. The target audience were inhabitants around mines and health personnel in a stratified randomly sampled health centers that attends to cases of related ailments as a result of these mines. The result of 217 respondents in the ratio of 87 for health personnel across health centres to 130 for the dweller who participated in this survey is presented in this paper. Based on the Likert scores, about 80% of the respondents are of the view that mining in their localities could predispose them to numerous radiological impacts of health maladies and environmental contamination. The responses of the health personnel also revealed that there are evidences of numerous ailments ranging from widespread Upper Respiratory Tracts Infections (URTI) which is connected to aerosol transporting particulate radionuclides from left over mines to heavy casualty inform of death. The result also revealed that most of the inhabitant who responded to our correspondents have either undermined the radiological impacts in their neighborhoods or are biased due to their direct or indirect involvement in the menace. It is therefore recommended that further studies should be intensified on the perceptional analysis to help bridge the potential gaps between the experimental findings and the opinion and perceptions of the inhabitants in relation to the potential radiological future dangers. disagree and strongly disagree on the Likert scale. The significant rate of the male mortality was directly or indirectly linked to their indulgence in mining and farming according to our correspondents. Based on the Likert scale, the percentage of the respondent’s perception on female mortality rate are 46%, 29%, 17% and 8% for agree, strongly agree, disagree and strongly disagree. This shows that their perception is significantly high in contract to the male mortality which could be due to female radiosensitivity over male according to a study reported by Wallace et al., (2003).