Is the Air we breathe really keeping us alive?
Naturally, the air that we breathe sustains our life, but every second spent at Agbogbloshie seems to scrape off some of that human life. On October 20, 2018, I had a great experience at Agbogbloshie with some colleagues. It was almost unbelievable how this place came to be known as the capital of E-waste in all of Africa. This experience made me question the quality of air that I breathe everyday. Comparing the pollution levels(sensor) at Agbogbloshie to that at Ashesi University- Berekuso, there was a vast disparity between the values. The pollution levels at Agbogbloshie are so high that they deteriorate the health conditions of the inhabitants in that vicinity.
To many people, Agbogbloshie is just a marketplace where they get their yams and onions. However, beyond the vegetables and yam tubers and the shouts of many “kayayos”(Head porters), there is a place I nicknamed “The metal mine” at Agbogbloshie. Here, all the Electronic waste could be found without even having to look at all. Many young men laboriously go through this E-waste for different purposes. The most popular one is the extraction of copper strips from old wires. It was appalling how they had to burn off the plastic around the wires just to get the copper out. Other ones include old car engine blocks and other scrap metals from old machines that are hammered and battered to extract the valued metals like iron and Aluminium from them. Among all these things that I witnessed that day, the most amazing and mind blowing event was watching young men hammer and chisel down an entire bus for scrap metal. Everything was just being torn apart manually, bit by bit. The copper strippers, the Iron and Aluminium extractors and the bus crushers all had one thing in common; they were all without protective gear. They all faced different levels of hazards including the air they all had to breathe throughout the day.
An article from The Guardian which was published in 2013 makes it clear that a lot of these young men who work and live in this dangerous environment despite their foreknowledge of the health risks involved come from the Northern part of Ghana. The irony of the situation is, making money from scrap metals is meant to be their way of surviving, but the air they breathe has strangle them to death every day.
The chart below shows the various pollutants and how they affect the air quality(the degree to which air in a particular location is safe and healthy to breathe).
The inhabitants of Agbogbloshie are very important resources to the nation, and their lives must be protected. How and when this will happen are questions that young people with the zeal to make Ghana better must answer.
