WP3 looks at air pollution and respiratory diseases following different traces of dust, sand, and particles in Bargny-Sendou, a traditional fishing village that has merged into the industrial periphery of Dakar, the capital of Senegal.
Dakar’s air pollution exceeds the WHO's limits for PM2.5 by over seven times while PM10 concentrations in Bargny currently surpass Senegalese standards, sometimes reaching up to 540%. These conditions are worse during the Harmattan season, when the Saharan desert dust reaches both places, deteriorating air pollution and causing temperature inversions that prolong pollutant retention in the troposphere. This project proposes to follow dust particles and the atmosphere they find themselves in through two ways.
The first part looks at Bargny where inhabitants are trapped between one of the oldest and largest, colonial cement factories in West Africa; a coal power plant; and a new deep-water port. The cement factory SOCOCIM (Société ouest africaine des ciments, before Société coloniale des chaux et ciments de l'A.O.F.), established in 1948, has grown exponentially with yet another kiln and the extension of its quarries that look like gaping holes in the landscape. The process of extracting rocks and other materials from the ground and their transport to the kilns for cement production has caused an immense amount of dust which joins other toxic particles from the coal plant and other industrial histories that are layered onto each other in Bargny. Grappling with a rise in tuberculosis cases, asthma and chronic bronchitis for years, citizens have been actively protesting against these infrastructures that produce different types of dust - white powder mixed with soil from the limestone quarries, black coal ashes from the power plant - and the expropriation of land that has accompanied the industries’ establishment. The recent protests were triggered by the construction of the new port, intended for open-air storage of raw materials, alongside the integration of an additional cement factory. Yet, just as the Bargnois struggle to prove ancestral ownership of their lands, they also encounter difficulties in evidencing a direct connection between their medical issues and industrial pollution. This allows the industries to keep encroaching on land and air. For example, the companies claim that the ‘natural’ Saharan dust causes the majority of the pollution instead of acknowledging their role and responsibility therein. In the meantime, the residents almost got used to the sound and vibrations of the power plant and cement factory - with the blasts at the limestone quarries and metallic noises of the power plant, the infrastructures also contribute to an important pollution in terms of sound and soil. Focusing on the temporalities, materialities and reverberations of dust - how it has been felt, heard and handled across different generations of inhabitants - this part asks how people deal with and try to heal breathing issues, and how they protest against the felt breathlessness that has shaped Bargny historically.
The second part takes up the question of the link between Saharan dust and industrial pollution, following how scientists and civil servants at the air quality stations and the meteorological laboratories have studied this connection. Biologists and geologists at the University Cheikh Anta Diop have recently found that the air samples they collected during Saharan dust episodes contained living organisms (bacteria, fungi, viruses), including human pathogens that cause important respiratory disease. Others have highlighted how climate change has contributed to longer periods of wind that add to a growing amount of dust. How do the scientists understand the link between episodes of Saharan dust and industrial pollution; and how in turn do they explain the rising asthmatic conditions and breathing issues amongst residents? Considering the history of meteorology in West Africa and its network of stations, this part is also attentive to how the connections drawn between weather monitoring, environment and health concerns came into being at the intimate intersection between colonial governance and meteorological science and enabled racialized forms of governance. How has the link between Saharan dust and breathing issues been made historically? And how have peaks of air pollution and the trajectories of dust been predicted? Based on the current predictions, what recommendations do they issue to citizens, from staying inside to wearing masks, and how do they factor the polluting industries into their calculations?
By paying particular attention to that which is transported by air – dust, sound and sand – this project examines how knowledge around air and the atmosphere is produced, mobilised and contested, following the ways in which people have tried to predict and monitor air; in which they have dealt with breathing issues; and how they protest and rally against polluting infrastructures. The project works with the question between the particle – the various pollutions which I am interested in - and the particular, to think about what each type of particle has in particular while thinking atmospheric space as one which does not come down - only - to the particular, but to the common; common to humanity in terms of atmosphere and also common to the two study sites (Bargny and Dakar) in a more local way. Here, dust, sound and sand in the air contribute to a particular atmosphere, a collective anxiety around breathlessness and larger questions around who has had the possibility, also historically, of breathing freely.