Assessment of Ambient Air Quality in the State of Kuwait - Al Jahra City Study

The main objective of this study is to present anassessment of ambient air quality of Al Jahra city (32kilometers/20 miles northwest Kuwait City). Measurements ofambient sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NO2) carbonmonoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), particulate matter(PM10), ozone (O3), methane (CH4) and Non-methanehydrocarbons (NCH4) along with metrological factors (windsspeed, wind direction, and solar radiation) were taken over theperiod of the year 2008. Most regional and worldwide studiesconsidered these pollutants for the assessment due to its vitaleffects on both health and environmental. The study present adescriptive statistics of the data, calculation of the Air QualityIndex (AQI) based on the reading average, along with the hazardquotient. Result shows that the AQI was in the green (good)region except for PM10 it was in the yellow (moderate) region.The calculated Hazard Index of all the components separatelyand the overall Health Index, did not exceed its ambient airquality standard (AAQS) which is reported by the USEPA. Thispaper also studies any possible relation between the presentedfactors using the correlation matrix technique. It was found thatthere is a relation between the NOx and both carbon monoxideand carbon dioxide. A simple analysis of variance using ANOVAtest was made on the data to identify the variance (quality) of thedata. A temporal study was made using the averageconcentrations of the data during the hours of the day for thewhole year to study the trend of these pollutants during thatcovered year. This part enables us to predict the sources of thepollutants according to its peak times