The heavy presence of noise pollution around us has been attributed to the reason why the average Nigerian shouts while speaking. Sola Salako-Ajulo, President and Founder of Consumer Advocacy Foundation of Nigeria (CAFON), alluded to this fact as a result of the voice density of the average Nigerian when speaking.
Salako made the submission recently in Lagos while delivering her keynote address at the World Consumer Rights Day Symposium 2021, organised by the Brand Journalists Association of Nigeria (BJAN).
Speaking on the title: “Tackling Plastic Pollution: Challenges, Opportunities And Solutions”, Salako said sound pollution is one of the pollutants that make the environment unhealthy and because we live in the same environment it tends to affect some of our lifestyles.
According to her, any sound that will have to force one to raise his or her voice before speaking- that is sound pollution and unfortunately, all that is present in Nigeria, especially in Lagos State and we have not been paying particular attention to that.
“For us in Nigeria, we don’t know that the density of our voices is higher, which is as a result of what is called sound pollution. And, there is a lot of that going on in Lagos especially,” she said, adding; “because of the pollution that we live with, the average Nigerians scream”.
Continuing she said, you know all those people who put out loud sound, churches and mosques included, they all constitute what is known as noise pollution, such are not helping the environment and that is why there are laws against those actions, she observed.
She defines pollution as the introduction of harmful materials into the environment, called pollutants and pollutants can be natural, such as volcanic ash, or they can be created by human activities. “A whole lot of the ones we are dealing with now are created by human activities, especially the household waste generated by individuals,” she said.
The consumer rights activist noted that, as the world becomes ‘westernized’, coupled with the ‘on the go lifestyle’ which requires easily disposable products, more waste are being generated. And if innovative ways are not created to mop up these wastes from the system, they find their way to the environment destroying the ecosystem and putting animals and human life at risk.
