Bacteriological Air Quality of Food Vending Areas in Selected Major Markets in Calabar Metropolis

Student: Evan's Chiamaka Faith (Project, 2025)
Department of Microbiology
Cross Rivers University of Technology, Calabar, Cross Rivers State

Abstract

Air is an important source of contamination in different areas of human endeavour (medicine, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, food industry etc.). Although the sources of air contamination are numerous (poor construction aspects of the building, improper air conditioning and ventilation etc.), basic and common sources are people and their activities in food vending areas. This study was aimed to analyze the bacteriological air quality of food vending areas in selected major markets in Calabar metropolis.
A total of 6 air samples from the vending areas were collected and cultured on nutrient agar using sedimentation techniques. From this study shows that the two food vending areas, Marian (plate 2 afternoon) had the highest viable mean bacteria count 412 CFU/m³, followed by Marian (plate 2 Morning) 401 CFU/m³, Watt (plate 1) 374 CFU/m³, while the least mean bacteria count was recorded on Watt (plate 4) 59 CFU/m³.
The contamination rate and percentage distribution assessed on the air samples revealed that among the air isolates Escherichia is the most frequently occurring isolate, with a percentage occurrence of 8 (40%). Therefore, the present work shows that the microbial air quality of the two vending areas are heavily contaminated with bacteria.

Keywords
Bacteriological air quality Food vending areas Calabar metropolis Air contamination Food safety Escherichia coli Staphylococcus aureus Pseudomonas Bacillus species Food-borne diseases Airborne bacteria CFU/m³ (Colony Forming Units) Sedimentation technique
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