Public Health Impact of Waste-Related Air Pollution in Africa: Scoping Review

In the reforming world, with the expeditious development of urbanisation and industrialisation; environmental issues have become a global crisis that requires immediate interventions and has posed a major threat to the health of the population. Air pollution is identified as one of the major environmental health hazards. However, there is a dearth of comprehensive data on the public health impact of waste-related air pollution in Africa. Thus, this scoping review seeks to explore and describe the effects of waste-related air pollution on public health in Africa.

We followed the 2018 PRISMA Scoping Review Guidelines for reporting this review. We browsed literature from 2014 to 2024 using keywords such as “Air pollution”, “Health impact” and “Africa”. From the yielded potential literature, only 23 studies were eligible for the review.

The review revealed four themes. Among the themes are sources of pollution, pollutants of air pollution, understanding the health impact of air pollution among the vulnerable population, and factors impeding the mitigation of air pollution.

The review revealed the sources and the health effects of air pollution. It underscored the role that socio-economic injustices, corruptions, and political issues have in exacerbating air pollution, particularly in rural areas. Therefore, this study recommends the development and implementation of innovative improvement strategies to remediate air pollution in remote areas of Africa.