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Port Harcourt densities range between 2.5 to 5.5 persons per room, in rooms that are rarely larger than 10m², with personal indoor living space averaging about 2.4m² per person for most of the city. Diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza and meningitis are easily transmitted in such conditions where poor environmental sanitation is exacerbated.

Environmental hazards associated with the work-place are common in Port Harcourt because of the wide occurrence of unregulated commercial and industrial businesses, because much work is done at home, because the work place is often the road-side, and because public health standards are easy to circumnavigate. Such hazards include dangerous concentrations of toxic chemicals and dust, inadequate lighting, ventilation and space, and lack of protection of workers from machinery and noise.

Many house sites in Port Harcourt are unsuitable. Often, they are on land prone to flooding or tidal inundation that has been poisoned with mis-managed landfill. They may be beside very busy and badly managed main roads where residents are subject to physical danger and high levels of dust and the fumes from motor vehicles containing carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and lead. The levels of lead may be toxic.

The open spaces in Port Harcourt are inadequate so that many children and young people has limited access to safe places for play, sport and social activities.

Although Port Harcourt produces a lot less refuse than European cities of the same size, it is badly managed and seriously pollutes the urban environment.

Disease vectors encouraged by the unsanitary conditions of the city include mosquitoes (malaria, filariasis, dengue fever and yellow fever), cockroaches (hepatitis A and diarrhoea), scabies mites, and body lice and flees (typhus).

Port Harcourt and its region is an important industrial centre producing a number of toxic and potentially hazardous wastes. The two oil refineries emit into the air sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, particulates, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, and into the water, benzene, heavy metals and high concentrations of dissolved petroleum hydrocarbons. NAFCON produces the highest quantities of waste water in the Niger Delta at 10,000 cubic metres a day, mainly containing Nitrogen compounds. Other industries in the area are likely to produce, amongst other wastes, asbestos, acids, arsenic, caustic soda, cyanide, heavy metals, nitrogen compounds, oils, phosphate compounds, and vinyl chloride: all potentially toxic.

The problem is not so much the amount of toxic wastes that the industrial city produces but that within a culture of poor and corruptible management there is always the risk that control standards will be lax and circumnavigated. For the same reason, and because Port Harcourt is a port, there is the ever present danger of the illegal importation and dumping of toxic wastes from Europe. No less of a danger to an industrial area such as Port Harcourt is the export of dirty industries from Europe where strictly enforced environmental controls make them uneconomic (the Aluminium plant at Ikot Abasi is a good example).

The environment of Port Harcourt is particularly susceptible to water pollution from human and industrial wastes. Recent research suggests that levels of Cadmium, Lead and Nitrates exceed World Health Organisation recommended safety levels in a number of local rivers.

Air pollution is not as serious a problem as water pollution, but the fact that at least one major oil company breaks its own rules about air pollution standards in other parts of Rivers State gives cause for concern. The most serious air pollutant is probably lead and dust from traffic for those who live and work beside main roads. 249