ARID ZONE JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING, TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT

1-9

Authors: K Ogedengbe, S A Ilupeju

The study was carried out to assess the technical problems associated with the sources, quality and quantity of drinking water supplies in Agege, Ifako/Ijaiye and Alimosho Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Lagos State, Nigeria. It was also conducted to find out the extent of water contaminations, from various sources, being consumed by residents of the LGAs studied and also to proffer solutions to reduce their effects. Households participation was involved it was revealed that about 35% of respondents use borehole, 25% obtained water from communal taps and 16% from well water. Individual house tap accounted for 11%, 9% from water vendors and 4% of the respondents employed water tankers. Chlorination was the most employed treatment technique while few others boil water before drinking. An average of 50 litres was the water use per capita. 50-100 meters was obtained as the average distance between respondents’ residence and water sources. The survey showed that some of these sources were sited near soakaways, some co-existing with tombs, dirty drains and water logged environment. Twelve water samples were examined for analysis on chemical and biological properties. Results obtained however showed that all chemical properties analyzed are within recommended standards for drinking water. Salmonella spp. was also not detected in any of the samples.

22-28

Authors: A A Abdulfattah, A M Rakiya, B M Abdulfattah

The well-orchestrated new millennium (year 2000) problem in computer-based economy has gone without any noticeable negative imprint as envisaged, and computer users have had sigh of relief. With Information and Communication Technology (ICT) still dictating pace in many sectors, the number of computer users is on the increase with full readiness to exploit all possible gains of this information age. In this paper, the authors bring into limelight health implication of the increase in computer application as a result of electromagnetic radiation from the monitor coupled with the attitude of computer users in Nigeria and the negative influence it could have on the application of ICT facilities in the country if not quickly tackled.

38-48

Authors: A M Kundiri, A B Alhassan, I Auda

A study of the soils of the fadama around Gashua was carried out to assess the contribution of harmattan dust deposition on their genesis and characteristics. The surface horizons have medium coarse prismatic structure or strongly developed coarse subangular or angular blocky which becomes coarse prismatic with depth. The surface horizons typically have loam to sandy loam textures and low bulk density values (<1.17). The annual addition of the harmattan dust has the potential of improving the nutrient contents of fadama soils. This study shows that harmattan dust is an important soil-forming factor in fadama soil pedogenesis and represents a significant natural process in the fluvial ecosystems. The clay minerals of dust and soil were similar, being dominated by kaolinite and illite, with smaller amounts of vermiculite. It is concluded that harmattan dust contributes significantly to the fertility of fadama soils.

60-65

Authors: S M Dauda, A U Dzivama

The efforts to discover and make optimal and effective use of locally developed rice thresher as substitute for imported rice threshers form the focus of this paper. A locally developed rice thresher was compared with an imported Votex rice fan fromHolland. The study was based on threshing efficiency, cleaning efficiency, total grain losses, grain recovery range, capacity utilization and threshing intensity. Three popular rice varieties, Faro 51, Faro 29 and Faro 21 were used to evaluate the performances of the threshers. The results showed that, the local thresher had 98.01%, 99.32%, 4.78%, 95.22%, 54.67% and 0.029 kWkg-1, as: threshing efficiency, cleaning efficiency, total grain loss, grain recovery range, and capacity utilization and threshing intensity respectively. Whereas the imported votex rice fan thresher had 98%, 95.77%, 8.72%, 91.28%, 76.97% and0.0037 kWkg-1 as threshing efficiency, cleaning efficiency, total grain loss, grain recovery range, capacity utilization and threshing intensity respectively. Thus the local thresher compared favorably with the imported thresher and can be used as substituted thereby conservingNigeria’s foreign exchange.