Airport noise and its impact on exposed urban population in Kuwait

The urban areas of the Gulf nations of the Cooperation Council (GCC) have grown rapidly over the last 3 decades. In the absence of a national strategic plan however, the urban infrastructural growth has resulted in a number of adverse impacts on the urban environment and has deteriorated the quality of urban life. This paper presents the results of the first study of aircraft noise and its impacts on the exposed population in the State of Kuwait. Noise from a sample of 1,007 landing aircrafts was measured during a ten-months period in four urban districts located under the approach path of landing aircrafts. The perceived impact of aircraft noise on the health and welfare of the exposed population of the four districts were also obtained and evaluated. Various indicators of noise (the Lmin, L90, L50, Leq, L10, Lmax, and the Leqpd) are presented. The results of a person-interview survey of a random sample of 1,000 residents of the four districts are also discussed. A significant percentage of the sample population were annoyed with aircraft noise, and suffer from its interference with their daily conversation, watching TV, eating, relaxing, working, and sleeping activities. More than a quarter of the exposed individuals felt tiredness and nervousness and often experienced headaches from aircraft noise. A number of recommendations for the improvement of aircraft noise pollution in Kuwait end the paper.