Breathe could kill us
That, in turn, has sent levels of air pollution soaring.
The levels of air pollution “for Port Harcourt are way off the [safety] chart”, said Rabia Said, a physicist at Bayero University in northern Nigeria who studies the soot crisis in Port Harcourt, at a public forum on the issue in 2017.
This smog isn’t just clogging the city’s lungs, it could also be fuelling increases in cancer risk. Soot as well as petroleum coke — a substance produced by oil refineries — are both on a list of 36 substances found in the air that the International Agency for Research on Cancer had said either cause cancer or are likely to.
Over the past three months, there have been several large protests in the city. Doctors have been among both the organisers and the participants, wearing T-shirts reading #STOPTHESOOT as they marched through the smoggy streets.
For many doctors, this was a familiar position to be in. For years, the healthcare sector has been the site of repeated strikes for better wages and working conditions and, pediatrician Fienemika notes, many doctors are intimately familiar with using protests to hold their government to account.
“So many of us are putting our lives, our careers and everything we have worked for on the line to ensure that the people of Rivers State and their environs get good health,” says Uko, the veterinarian.
And at least on some levels, their