Household Hazardous Waste Management Practices Among Pastoral Community Of Mandera County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Household hazardous waste possess physical, chemical or biological characteristics, which requires special handling and disposal procedures to avoid risk to health and/or environmental effects. The pastoral population of Mandera county has been treated in health facilities with complains of poisoning or reaction resulting from hazardous substances. Health effects of exposure to household hazardous waste could also take time to manifest in people who are exposed to it, such as development of cancers and effects on unborn babies. The pastoral population is unaware of the potential hazards caused by the many household hazardous waste in their homes therefore the options of safe disposal and storage are unexplored. The main objective of this study was to establish household hazardous waste management practices among pastoral community of Mandera County, Kenya. The specific objectives were; to identify the type of household hazardous waste generated and their disposal methods; to determine the occurrence of accidents related to household hazardous waste and to determine the level of knowledge on household hazardous waste management among household heads in the pastoral community. The study employed a descriptive cross sectional design. The sample size for this study was 415 household heads and 17 key informants from Mandera East Sub-County. The study used a multistage sampling technique that comprised of three steps: simple random sampling, systematic simple random sampling and purposive sampling. Data was collected by use of both qualitative and quantitative methods. Questionnaires, focus group discussions and key informant interviews tools were used to collect data. A pre test was conducted to assess the validity and reliability of the research instruments. Clean coded data was entered into SPSS version 20, frequencies and percentages were used for descriptive statistics while Chi square was used for inferential analysis. Quantitative data was presented in frequencies and percentages. The study found that almost half (48%) of the household heads in Mandera County had moderate knowledge on household hazardous waste while (32%) had good knowledge which had been obtained from radio and health workers. The study also found that almost all of the households at (99.5%) in Mandera County were generating used batteries and electronic items; unused drugs and pharmaceuticals for either human or animal use; remains of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and accaracides; and used needles and syringes from animal treatment. The study found out that open dumping and incineration were the most common methods of waste disposal by all the study research participants. Further, to this, 8.3 per cent of the households in Mandera County had members who were victims of household hazardous waste related accidents. Most of these household members affected were aged between 0 and 5 years. The study established that there was a significant association between the level of education of research participants and segregation of household hazardous waste (p