The Kuwaiti oil fire during the first Gulf War resulted in the formation of approximately 300 \"oil lakes\" of varying sizes that covered over 110 km2 of the desert land. This threatens the fragile desert ecosystems and human health. Following the award of over US$2 billion to the State of Kuwait by the United Nations, large-scale remediation of the oil-contaminated soils has now been on the agenda. However, how to implement the remediation program in a cost-effective way represents a major challenge. In this study, cost-effective remediation strategies were developed based on field and laboratory investigations in a typical oil lake area. Overall, most of the lighter petroleum hydrocarbons (PHCs) were lost due to evaporation. Long-chain aliphatic PHCs dominated the PHCs in the investigated oil lake area. This has implications for developing remediation strategies. Toxicity assessment results showed that the majority of soils pose a low environmental risk with a hazard index <1. Therefore, intensive treatment of these PHCs may not be necessary for these soils. Although active treatment methods are needed to remove the contaminants as soon as practical for the relatively small areas of high contamination, more cost-effective passive methods should be considered to minimize the remedial costs for the larger area of the non-hotspot areas. Given the extremely low risk in terms of groundwater contamination by the contaminated soils, it may not be necessary to remove the soils from the contaminated sites. A low-cost capping method should be sufficient to minimize human exposure to the PHC-contaminated soils.

Middle Eastern desert countries like Kuwait are known for intense dust storms and enormous petrochemical industries affecting ambient air pollution. However, local health authorities have not been able to assess the health impacts of air pollution due to limited monitoring networks and a lack of historical exposure data.
To assess the burden of PM2.5 on mortality in the understudied dusty environment of Kuwait.
We analyzed the acute impact of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) on daily mortality in Kuwait between 2001 and 2016. To do so, we used spatiotemporally resolved estimates of PM2.5 in the region. Our analysis explored factors such as cause of death, sex, age, and nationality. We fitted quasi-Poisson time-series regression for lagged PM2.5 adjusted for time trend, seasonality, day of the week, temperature, and relative humidity.
There was a total of 70,321 deaths during the study period of 16 years. The average urban PM2.5 was estimated to be 46.2 ± 19.8 µg/m3. A 10 µg/m3 increase in a 3-day moving average of urban PM2.5 was associated with 1.19% (95% CI: 0.59, 1.80%) increase in all-cause mortality. For a 10 µg/m3 reduction in annual PM2.5 concentrations, a total of 52.3 (95% CI: 25.7, 79.1) deaths each year could be averted in Kuwait. That is, 28.6 (95% CI: 10.3, 47.0) Kuwaitis, 23.9 (95% CI: 6.4, 41.5) non-Kuwaitis, 9.4 (95% CI: 1.2, 17.8) children, and 20.9 (95% CI: 4.3, 37.6) elderly deaths each year.
The overwhelming prevalence of devastating dust storms and enormous petrochemical industries in the Gulf and the Middle East has intensified the urgency to address air pollution and its detrimental health effects. Alarmingly, the region\'s epidemiological research lags behind, hindered by a paucity of ground monitoring networks and historical exposure data. In response, we are harnessing the power of big data to generate predictive models of air pollution across time and space, providing crucial insights into the mortality burden associated with air pollution in this under-researched yet critically impacted area.

E-commerce saw a paradigm shift during COVID. Consumers turned to online shopping when pandemic lockdowns caused brick-and-mortar stores to shut for extended periods. Although the pandemic drove more buyers online, it had negative impacts that affected e-commerce performance. This study assesses both positive and negative impacts and their relative significance. The findings are then used to prioritize different strategies for e-commerce development in four vibrant Middle Eastern economies: United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. The study employs a hybrid approach incorporating grey analytical hierarchy process (GAHP) and grey relational analysis (GRA). The GAHP evaluates the relative significance of impacts, whereas the GRA ranks the strategies. The study is based on the responses from 36 local e-commerce specialists. The findings revealed that the supply chain disruption was a rather significant factor, and that \"expanding supplier base\" was a top-ranked strategy. The study suggests that increasing market share of e-commerce will necessitate the improvement of the supply chains, including the expansion of the supply base, as well as the establishment of sustainable supply chains. In addition to that, the moment has come to implement meaningful changes, such as digital transformation of supply chains, in order to fulfil customer expectations.

The absence of air pollution monitoring networks makes it difficult to assess historical fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposures for countries in the areas, such as Kuwait, which are severe impacted by desert dust and anthropogenic pollution.
We constructed an ensemble machine learning model to predict daily PM2.5 concentrations for regions lack of PM2.5 observations.
The model was constructed based on daily PM2.5, visibility, and other meteorological data collected at two sites in Kuwait. Then, our model was applied to predict the daily level of PM2.5 concentrations for eight airports located in Kuwait and Iraq from 2013 to 2020.
As compared to traditional statistic models, the proposed machine learning methods improved the accuracy in using visibility to predict daily PM2.5 concentrations with a cross-validation R2 of 0.68. The predicted level of daily PM2.5 concentrations were consistent with previous measurements. The predicted average yearly PM2.5 concentration for the eight stations is 50.65 µg/m3. For all stations, the monthly average PM2.5 concentrations reached their maximum in July and their minimum in November.
These findings make it possible to retrospectively estimate daily PM2.5 exposures using the large-scale databases of historical visibility in regions with few particulate matter monitoring stations.
The scarcity of air pollution ground monitoring networks makes it difficult to assess historical fine particulate matter exposures for countries in arid areas such as Kuwait. Visibility is closely related to atmospheric particulate matter concentrations and historical airport visibility records are commonly available in most countries. Our model make it possible to retrospectively estimate daily PM2.5 exposures using the large-scale databases of historical visibility in arid regions with few particulate matter ground monitoring stations. The product of such models can be critical for environmental risk assessments and population health studies.

Electronic waste (e-waste) has become one of the major causes of environmental concerns due to its large volume, high generation rate and toxic environmental burdens. Recent estimates put e-waste generation at about 54 million tonnes per annum with figures reaching approximately 75 million tonnes per annum by 2030. In this manuscript, the state-of-the-art technologies and techniques for segregation, recovery and recycling of e-waste with a special focus on the valorisation aspects of e-plastics and e-metals which are critically reviewed. A history and insight into environmental aspects and regulation/legislations are presented including those that could be adopted in the near future for e-waste management. The prospects of implementing such technologies in the State of Kuwait for the recovery of materials and energy from e-waste where infrastructure is lacking still for waste management are presented through Material Flow Analysis. The information showed that Kuwait has a major problem in waste accumulation. It is estimated that e-waste in Kuwait (with no accumulation or backlog) is generated at a rate of 67,000 tpa, and the imports of broadcasting electronics generate some 19,428 tonnes. After reviewing economic factors of potential recovered plastics, iron and glass from broadcasting devices in Kuwait as e-waste, a total revenue of $399,729 per annum is estimated from their valorisation. This revenue will open the prospect of ventures for other e-waste and fuel recovery options as well as environmental benefits and the move to a circular economy.

Dust is a major component of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in arid regions; therefore, concentrations of this pollutant in countries such as Kuwait exceed air quality standards. There is limited understanding on the impact and burden of high PM2.5 concentrations on morbidity in these countries. In this study, we explore the association of PM2.5 and the risk of respiratory hospital admissions in Kuwait. A time-series regression model was used to investigate daily variations in respiratory admissions and PM2.5 concentrations from 2010 to 2018. Due to the lack of historical air quality sampling in Kuwait, we used estimated daily PM2.5 levels from a hybrid PM2.5 prediction model. Individual and cumulative lag effects of PM2.5 over a 5-day period were estimated using distributed lag linear models. Associations were stratified by sex, age, and nationality. There were 218,749 total respiratory admissions in Kuwait during the study period. Results indicate that for every 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5, a 1.61% (95% CI = 0.87, 2.35%) increase in respiratory admissions followed over a 5-day cumulative lag. Our estimates show that a 10 μg/m3 reduction in average exposure will potentially avert 391 yearly respiratory admissions (95% CI = 211,571), with 265 fewer admissions among Kuwaitis (95% CI = 139,393) and 262 fewer admissions among children under 15 years of age (95% CI = 125,351). Different strata of the Kuwaiti population are vulnerable to respiratory hospitalization with short-term exposure to PM2.5, especially those under 15 years of age. The findings are informative for public health authorities in Kuwait and other dust-prone countries.

The rapid urbanization growth has not only improved the living standards of people but also raised concerns for environmental sustainability over the globe. In this regard, the issue of excessive urban concentration or over-agglomeration in metropolitan areas is nowadays the prime concern for urban planning and building energy-efficient and eco-friendly infrastructures. In response to rising interest in the dynamic linkage between urban concentration and environment, the current research empirically examines the crucial nexus between urban agglomerations and environmental degradation in top ten urban agglomerated countries in the world from 1960Q1 to 2014Q4. The current research is the pioneer empirical work in the area of urbanization by applying recently developed and innovative methods of quantile-on-quantile (QQ) approach and quantile Granger causality in relatively less explored area of urban agglomeration at the cross-country level. Our mainstream findings indicate that urban agglomeration has a strong positive effect on CO2 emissions in most of our sample countries, and this effect is more pronounced in higher quantiles of respective variables. These results imply that excessive levels of urban concentration in big cities cause environmental degradation, which could be attributed to extreme population density, overcrowding, traffic congestion and extensive demand for energy consumption. However, some countries such as Israel, Paraguay and Columbia exhibit overall declining and negative trends about the relationship between urban agglomerations and CO2 emissions. Moreover, quantile Granger causality results confirm the previous findings of QQ regression and verify the existence of bidirectional causal nexus between urban agglomerations and CO2 emissions in the majority of the lower, middle and upper quantiles in our selected top ten countries except for Kuwait. However, the unidirectional causal relationship also exists for several countries for extreme lower, middle and extremely higher quantiles. Our findings extend the previous work on agglomeration-environment nexus by determining the asymmetric magnitude of linkage between these two variables demanding cautious and individual-focused policies for urban planning and environmental sustainability.

Bioremediation is an emerging and sustainable technique that can either occur naturally or be enhanced by introducing nutrients or bacteria able to degrade specific contaminants. In this study, the efficiencies of natural attenuation with nutrients, and bioaugmentation with nutrients and a consortium of five exogenous bacteria, were evaluated for total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) degradation in five highly contaminated soils from China, and Kuwait. The bioaugmentation treatment exhibited better efficiencies than the natural attenuation, and reached 48.10% of TPH degradation with a half-life of 41.76 d. The addition of exogenous bacteria also increased the removal of TPH in the highest contaminated soil sample. The concentration of TPH in that soil was reduced from 236, 500 mg kg-1 of dry soil to 176, 566 mg kg-1 of dry soil in 40 d, which was equivalent to 25.4% degradation of TPH. The degradation rate (1501.8 mg kg-1d-1 of TPH) was higher than those reported in previous studies with a lower concentration of TPH. The bioaugmented strains could withstand high concentrations of TPH and thrive in five different types of soils. Consequently, these strains can be used to remediate soils that are heavily contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons.

By using panel data over the 1980-2017 period and two alternative indicators of environmental pollution (carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions), this paper investigates the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Using three alternative econometric estimation techniques, we find strong evidence of a long-run inverted U-shaped relationship between real GDP per capita and both environmental indicators in the GCC region. Country-level short-run analysis indicates that the EKC hypothesis holds for Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) when CO2 emissions are used as a measure of environmental pollution. However, when SO2 emissions are used as a measure of environmental pollution, the EKC hypothesis holds for Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The results of a recently developed panel causality test reveal one-way causality from real GDP per capita to CO2 emissions and from real GDP per capita to SO2 emissions.

There is a sharp rise in the use of social networking sites (SNSs) by university students for various purposes. However, little is known about the use of SNSs for educational purposes. This study aims to determine educational use of SNSs by the medical students of two Saudi and a Kuwaiti medical school. A cross-sectional study was conducted by administering a 20-statement questionnaire to the undergraduate medical and allied health sciences students of two Saudi universities: Taibah University (TU) and Imam Abdulrahman AlFaisal University (IAFU), and one Kuwaiti university, Kuwait University (KU). The data were collected and analyzed by SPSS 20. Of a total of 1312 respondents, 1181 (90%) students used SNSs and 131 (10%) did not use SNSs for any reason. Further, only 442/1181 (37%, p < 0.00) students used SNSs for education and found these sites to be useful. As many as 357 (27%) students used SNSs for sharing education-related information once a day, 306 (23%) 3-5 times a day, and 331 (25%) once a week. A maximum of 678 (52%) used Facebook for educational purpose and most of the students, 469 (38%), used SNSs for sharing lectures. There were significant variations in responses among genders and year of schooling. The use of online social media in medical education is a rapidly evolving arena of scholarship. Low use of SNSs for sharing information and significant variations in perceptions of medical students about social media should draw attention of policy-makers for promoting awareness and educational reforms.