An Awareness Survey of Inhabitants Exposure to Radiological Impacts on Mines in Yauri LGA, Kebbi State, Nigeria

A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Yauri LGA, Kebbi State in between April, 2015 and January, 2016 in order to ascertain the level of awareness of inhabitant’s exposure to radioactivity from the mines. Yauri LGA was sampled based on its metropolitan and suburban parts that receives heavy mining activities by stratified random sampling by proportions. An interactive medium was created to sample the opinions of inhabitants around these mines through questionnaire. A total of 150 questionnaire were designed, 30 were accepted by the respondents and 22 were returned with response from the correspondents during the survey and interview to document and assessment awareness of the inhabitants. The study unveiled facts about the inhabitant’s awareness towards the environmental and health effect of indiscriminate mining activities around living places. The results shows that over 70% of the inhabitants within the suburb and metropolis concurred to the potential health consequences in their dwellings as a result of exposure to radioactivity from the mines respectively. These results indicates that the environmental and health discomfort due to indiscriminate mining activities around living places will be more significant in the near future if no immediate efforts are put in place to mimic future malady. The second aspect of this study whose results will be published in the subsequent issue involved collection of soil, water and vegetation samples in order to further assess the level of radioactive elements viz: 226Ra, 232Th and 40K occurrence in the study locality.