Air Pollution in Kuwait

Air defilement is ace of the problems facing the international communities. Air pollution is known to have ruin effects on the surroundings. Kuwait has a long history of argumentation pollution since the era of the Gulf war. During the Gulf War, more than 600 oil colour rise up were set on fire leading to loss of 6 cardinal barrels of oil every twenty-four hours and devastating pedigree pollution. There were big(a) pools and lakes of oil that led to water and land pollution.The burning oil surface of Kuwait, which were equated to Chernobyl disaster, emitted piles of green house gases like sulfur dioxide, cytosine monoxide, carbon dioxide, and oxides of nitrogen leading to devastating effects on plant and animals. Although the oil fires were put out, the imprint on the environment are still discernable many more years after the Gulf War. Since the massive stemma pollution during the Gulf War, Kuwait has made gain in cleanup the environment but air pollution is still rampant.Policy ChallengeSince the Gulf War, air pollution is still a major problem in Kuwait. The administration has embarked on a massive program to clean the air but the policies adopted have not provided total solution to the problem.Kuwait Environment familiar Authority has been on the frontline in fighting the air pollution problems which dates stand to the Gulf War era. However, most of the environmental policies that were formulated by the organization then were aimed at reversing air pollution effect of the Gulf War and most of them have not been able to tackle the current problems (Al Jeran and Khan, 2009).There has been horrific growth in population in the soil and the business environment has also grown in different ways. Large settlement in cities and towns has led to increased air pollution mainly from increase spell of vehicles emitting tons of pollutant gases every day. Kuwait oil industry which is the mainstay sparing activity in the country has also contri buted to air pollution.Analysis of the problemAccording to the results of a subscribe to that was published in Al-Qabas Newspaper in June 2006, more than 86.9% of Kuwait population considers air pollution as the biggest environmental challenge they have to wish with (Al-Mutairi and Koushki, 2009). This is evidence of increased air pollution which shows that there has been little progress to reverse the effect of the Gulf wars more than a decade later.Air pollution in Kuwait has been contributed by two main sources including transport and oil industry. Studies have reveals that automobiles are the main mode of transport in the country with an average employed person making more than 6.1 trips every day with a mean length of 13.6 km.Studies also show an average man-to-man is likely to be delayed for more than 68 minutes habitual in traffic congestion (Koushki, 2007). A study carried out in 2005 revealed that an average Kuwait resident traveling to and from work generated about (Al -Mutairi and Koushki, 2009)a) 31,275 tons of Volatile Organic Compoundsb) 247,764 tones of carbon monoxidec) 19,594 tons of oxides of nitrogend) 1,703 tons of sulfur dioxidee) 6 million tons of carbon dioxideTraffic has been rated as the leading campaign of air pollution in Kuwait urban areas.However, in the verdant and urban areas, power stations and oil refinery plants makes a huge plowshare to air pollution as well. Kuwait is one of the oil sizable countries and oil contributed a large part to the country GDP. However, oil geographic expedition has come with serious effects on the environment, notably grey clouds of pasture from oil refineries that goes up the sky.