KUWAIT CITY, April 5: “The air quality that you breathe is very important as it has a direct impact on your health. A better understanding and monitoring of air quality will result in a clear regulatory framework to protect the public health and welfare from the adverse effects of air pollution,” stated Brian Freeman, the Team Leader of Air Regulatory Management Systems for the Kuwait Integrated Environmental Management project funded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), during a lecture held on Wednesday at the American University of Kuwait (AUK).

The lecture entitled “Every Breath You Take: Understanding Air Quality” was organized by the Environment Club (Al-Akhdar) at the AUK in collaboration with the UNDP, Kuwait Environment Public Authority and) in commemoration of the Environmental Month under the patronage of Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah.

Freeman tackled in his lecture the composition of air that people breathe, definition of Air Quality, how it is measured relative to concentration and time, how to compute air quality using the Kuwait Air Quality Index based on the various monitoring stations in Kuwait and what steps are being taken by the Kuwait government in improving the air quality in the country.

At the onset of his lecture, Freeman outlined the Ideal Gas Law, some scientific formulas and computations of air which is composed of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Carbon Dioxide and other gases followed by his discussion of the various sources of emissions that can affect air quality in a particular area such as electricity generation, fossil fuel combustion, waste disposal fires, industrial processes, road dust solvent use, on road vehicles, non road equipment, area sources, combined sources and biogenic sources.

Emissions
He explained the types of emissions namely process (chemical processes and reactions, industrial activities, fugitive sources - gas leaks & dust, tank & transfer operations), combustion and spills/incidents and how pollutants are generated from them that can result in a bad air quality that is detrimental to public health.

Freeman enumerated the types of pollutants such as carbon monoxide (coming from automobiles, gas stoves, heaters, tobacco smoke & open burns), sulfur dioxide (from utility and industrial boilers, smelters and oil combustion), nitrogen oxides (from automobiles, power plants and industrial boilers, gas stoves and ovens and space heaters), nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter (from fugitive dust, fossil-fuel combustion, wood/bio fuel combustion, tobacco smoke), lead (from fossil fuel combustion, paints, smelters & battery plants, urban soil from old gasoline) and sources of Ozone.

“We do not generate Ozone, however, we generate Ozone pre-cursors such as nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH). Air pollution is produced when sunlight acts upon VOCs to form harmful substances such as Ozone, aldehydes and peroxyacetylnitrate (PAN),” he explained. The effects of ozone to human health include acute lung impairment, coughing, nausea, throat irritation, increased susceptibility to lung infections as well as substantial crop yield losses, foliar damage to plants and trees, damage to industrial products and materials.

Pollutants
Freeman also discussed the adverse effects of the other pollutants to people’s health that mostly cause respiratory-related illness to those who are exposed to any or more of them. He added that air pollutants movement and concentration are based on meteorology (weather) and topography (land use and features) such as wind speed, wind direction, atmospheric stability, atmospheric turbulence, solar activity, relative humidity, air/water temperature, surface roughness and surface reflectivity.

Wrapping up his lecture, Freeman, cited to the attendees the steps and measures being taken by the Kuwait Environment Public Authority (KEPA) to come up with an integrated air compliance and enforcement program to improve Kuwait’s air quality.

Freeman stressed that people can also do their own share in improving the air quality in the place that they live in. “Instead of filling up your gas tank at day time, fill it up at night because gasoline vapor is a pre-cursor to ozone production because it is transformed by sunlight into ozone through photochemical reactions.

By filling up at night, the vapors can be diluted in the atmosphere before they have a chance to be converted into ozone and creating localized concentrations of poor air quality,” he pointed out.

He also urged motorists not to drive fast or accelerate aggressively because unnecessary fuel is used and does not burn efficiently in the engine. “Of course, turning off electrical appliances like lights and air drying clothes also reduces energy demands on the power stations. I also recommend covering paint cans when not using them and replacing chemical solvents with citric based cleaners,” shared Freeman.