Perceived Health Consequences of Indiscriminate Waste Disposal by the Market Women

Abstract

Indiscriminate waste disposal habit has caused health related diseases. This study was carried out to investigate the perceived health consequences of indiscriminate waste disposal by the market women of Ijebu – Ode Township. A descriptive survey design was used for the study while market women’s perception of health consequences of indiscriminate waste disposal was the main objective of this study. A total of 500 participants were drawn from the population as sample size for the study while stratified sampling technique was used to sectionalize the services and products being produced or sold by the market women. Simple random sampling was used to select 300 respondents from Ita – Osu market and 200 respondents from Oke Aje market. The instrument used for data collection was a self-developed Indiscriminate Waste Disposal and Health Consequences Questionnaire (IWDHCQ) with a reliability index of 0.83. Inferential statistics of chi-square was used to analyse the data at 0.05 level of significance. All the five hypotheses tested were not accepted which revealed that market women significantly perceived Lassa fever, Typhoid fever, Malaria fever, Food Contamination, Water Source Contamination as health consequences of indiscriminate waste disposal. Based on the findings, some recommendations were recommended to government, policy makers, health authorities and market women among were: health campaign on better waste disposal methods to market women, educating the market women in order to appreciate the health problems associated with indiscriminate waste disposal and the enforcement of sanitation laws by the appropriate authorities, just to mention a few.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n14p553