Bayelsa State: Anxiety As Strange Soot Envelops Capital, Yenagoa - Liberty TV/Radio - News - Voice For All! Vision For Alll!
Publisher (A.M)
December 28, 2021
The development, according to reports, is largely linked to the upsurge
in Kpo-fire, an illegal but thriving oil bunkering business in the Niger-
Delta of which Bayelsa is the epicenter.
Kpo-fire is simply a local oil process of heating the crude in fabricated
oven to extract petroleum products while the residual is released into the
environment not minding the implication on the ecosystem.
Findings also attributed the negative practice of setting ablaze crude oil
impacted site in the state by some contractors in the name of cleanup, as
well as the burning of seized stolen crude by security operatives to the
not environment-friendly development.
Some residents of the state and other parts of the state had earlier raised
the alarm towards the twilight of the rainy season over what they
described as black rain whenever there was downpour but the alarm was
not taken serious until the soot appeared late November as the clouds
became a hazy grey.
The problem is more pronounced in the morning hours when the thick
blanket of black soot covers the landscape.
Respiratory tract irritation, (cough, catarrh, tearing), allergies, irritation
of the eyes, irritation of the skin, exacerbation of asthma, lung cancer,
chronic bronchitis, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, COPD and
several other chronic lung diseases as some of the attendant health
effects.