Assessment of the Correlation between Aerosol Optical Depth and Respiratory Diseases over Zaria, Kaduna, Nigeria, for 10 Years

Atmospheric Aerosols are highly abundant in windblown dust events originating in arid and semi-arid areas. Aerosols are dangerous to human health when the emission rate is presumably high. Harmattan dust is considered to be amongst the most harmful of all air pollutants due to the toxic effect of the dust constituents. Respiratory infections make up more than 20% of the causes of human mortality and morbidity. This study was carried out to assess the correlation between aerosol loading and respiratory diseases at Zaria, Kaduna State in North-Central Nigeria. The aerosol data were accessed from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectra-radiometer (MODIS) platform, while data on respiratory diseases were obtained from Ahmadu Bello University (A.B.U) Teaching Hospital Shika, Zaria, Nigeria from Jan 2009 – Dec 2018. Within that period, 2022 patients were diagnosed with different ranges of respiratory diseases. Out of 2022 516 (25.52%) were adult male, 455 (22.5%) were female, while teenagers were constituted 290 (14.34%), children were 385 (19.04%), and infants were 376 (18.6%). The correlation between aerosol optical depth and the number of cases of respiratory ailments was evaluated. A correlation coefficient of 0.65 was evaluated in the dry season, while in the rainy season the correlation coefficient was -0.55, overall correlation for an inter-annual variation is 0.27 while for the seasonal variation is 0.49. These results suggest that there is a positive correlation between aerosol loading and respiratory cases at Zaria. It also shows that the correlation between the dry seasons is high compared to the rainy season.