A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF AIR POLLUTION AND ITS CAUSES

CHAPTER ONE 
INTRODUCTION 
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY 
Nigeria, located in West Africa, has a total land area of 983,213 square kilometers, the estimated population is over 150 million people (World Bank Population Figures) yielding an average density of more than 120 persons per square kilometers. Industrial activities, in its modern forms, are relatively recent in the history of Nigeria’s economic development. During the pre-colonial period, Nigeria featured considerable craft industry as modern factory activity was then not known. With the advent of the Second World War and its aftermath, the economy of Nigeria changed tremendously and there were demands from Europe for industrial raw material. With time, due to the low technological base, industrial development took on the assembly-type pattern of import substitution (Wikipedia, 2015).
However, political self determination since 1960 did provide the opportunity for improving on its import substitution strategy as well as developing its potentials for real industrial take off through capital goods industry. Prior to the discovery of Crude Oil in Oloibiri, Rivers State in 1956, agriculture (before 1970) was the mainstay of the Nigerian economy. The Oil boom witnessed in the 1970’s led to a tremendous increase in industrial activities. With financial resources available from oil and no development policy, unguided urbanization and industrialization took place. As desirable and necessary as this development was, it became an albatross not of itself but because of the lack of appropriate environmental protection policies to guide it. The result was the indiscriminate silting of industries, deforestation and desertification, disregarding the need for environment concern. The process technology of some of these industries often resulted in unacceptable levels of toxic and dangerous industrial wastes and effluent emissions.

 A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF AIR POLLUTION AND ITS CAUSES (ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)