Assessment of Industrial Pollution Load in Lagos, Nigeria by Industrial Pollution Projection System (IPPS) versus Effluent Analysis

Abstract

Lagos is the economic capital of Nigeria with over 70% of industries in the country located there. It is also the fastest growing city in Nigeria in terms of development and industrial infrastructure, forecast to be one of the three megacities in the world with population of over 20 million by the year 2025. The rapid growth and haphazard urbanization have led to an increase in waste generation and environmental pollution. The industrial pollution problems faced by Lagos with over 7,000 medium and large scale manufacturing facilities are directly related to the rapid industrial growth and the haphazard industrialization without environmental consideration (Oketola and Osibanjo, 2009a). Pollution abatement technologies are largely absent and the consequence is a gross pollution of natural resources and environmental media. Since effective environmental protection cannot take place in a data vacuum, Industrial Pollution Projection System (IPPS), which is a rapid environmental management tool for pollution load assessment, has been employed in this study to estimate industrial pollution loads and to ascertain the agreement between IPPS models and conventional effluent analysis. It has been recognized that the developing countries lack the necessary information to set priorities, strategies, and action plans on environmental issues. Plant-level monitoring of air, water and toxic emissions is at best imperfect, monitoring equipment is not available and where available is obsolete; data collection and measurement methodology are questionable, and there is usually lack of trained personnel on industrial sites (Oketola and Osibanjo, 2009b; Hettige et al., 1994). In the absence of reliable pollution monitoring data, the World Bank has created a series of datasets that have given the research community the opportunity to better understand levels of pollution in developing countries, and therefore issue policy advice with more clarity (Aguayo et al., 2001). Hence, the World Bank developed the Industrial Pollution Projection System (IPPS), which is a rapid assessment tool for pollution load estimation towards the development of appropriate policy formulation for industrial pollution control in the developing countries, where insufficient data on industrial pollution proved to be an impediment to setting-up pollution control strategies and prioritization of activities (Faisal, 1991; Arpad et al, 1995). IPPS is a modeling system, which has been developed to exploit the fact that industrial pollution is heavily affected by the scale of industrial activity, by its sectoral composition, and by the type of process technology used in production. IPPS combines data from