Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Air pollution in the metropolis of Tehran has reached an alarming level, though it has become a chronic problem over the past few years.

Heavy smog in Tehran on Saturday caused stagnation, closing government offices, universities, and schools, and consequently disrupting citizens' plans. Because of air pollution all games in the Iranian premier league scheduled to be held in Tehran on Friday and Saturday were cancelled to avoid jeopardizing the players' health, Mehr news agency reported.

It was not the first time that the city of Tehran, with a population of eight million has been shut down due to air pollution, sending a bad image about Iran to the outside world.

Just in December of last year, Iran was forced to declare two days of holiday in the capital because of the amount of air pollution.

Tehran, which spans over an area of 900 square kilometers, is considered one of the world's most polluted cities. On weekends, the city's population reaches 15 million, leading to traffic jams and high pollution in the city centre.

At the beginning of December, member of Iran's parliament said that Iran daily loses some $65 million every day, when schools, universities and other institutions are closed due to heavy air pollution.

Two years ago, the World Bank put the cost of air pollution in Tehran at about $3.3 billion. Obviously, the cost has increased since then as air pollution has been getting worse from year to year.

Several years ago report by the United Nations Environment Program ranked Iran at 117th place among 133 countries in terms of environmental indexes that put this country in the top 30 most polluted countries of the world.

Tehran's pollution is mainly blamed on bumper-to-bumper traffic in a city wedged between two mountains which trap fumes. But major Iranian cities also struggle with pollution on a seasonal basis.

Pollution is also exacerbated by increasing reliance on domestic production of petrol of a lower grade, and therefore more polluting, a byproduct of Western sanctions on Iran's fuel imports.

Some experts and officials say the low quality of the gasoline and diesel fuel that is used is responsible for the heavy smog in Tehran. The fact that some other big cities, like Isfahan, Mashhad, Arak, Karaj, Qom, Tabriz, and Ahvaz, are facing more or less a similar situation backs up this view.

Two years ago, according to a study from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Iranian city of Ahvaz had the highest levels of any of the 1,100 cities worldwide that were studied by the WHO, with about 372 micrograms. Three other Iranian cities were in the bottom 10 in air quality.

Tehran Air Quality and Control Company Managing Director Yousef Rashidi recently told the newspaper Etemad that cars account for 70 to 80 percent of the air pollution in Tehran. However, he says the cars' combustion system is the main culprit in the air pollution problem and not low quality gasoline.

Rashidi earlier warned that air pollution in the metropolis of Tehran has reached an "unhealthy" level.

He said according to forecasts, air pollution in Tehran will increase in the further due to the inversion effect.

Rashidi said that heavy air pollution aggravates respiratory allergies and diseases, and heart and lung problems and causes premature death in the people that suffer from heart and lung diseases.

On Sunday, he warned carcinogens in Iranian-made petrol are higher than international standards.

"Based on Euro 4 standard the amount of carcinogens in petrol should be less than one per cent but the level of our domestically produced petrol is between two and three per cent," Rashidi local newspaper.

Iran produces gasoline from heavy crude oil, which requires special oil refineries due to high sulfur content.

Iran's refineries are not special and progressive to do this and therefore oil refining process is not perfect. Some Iranian petrochemical units have been allocated to produce gasoline after U.S. embargo on selling gasoline to Iran by foreign companies.

Rashidi said the level of sulphur content in the petrol is three times higher than the standard.

Iran produces around 60 million liters of petrol on a daily basis, corresponding roughly to its national consumption, according to figures from the oil ministry.

Officials have promised to increase the production of higher grade petrol with Euro 4 and 5 standards, used in European countries, from nine million liters per day to around 25 million by March.

Due to the air pollution in Tehran, children and people with respiratory and heart problems have been advised to stay indoors.

An adviser to the Health Ministry Hassan Aghajani said on a television program on Saturday that 4,460 people died due to air pollution in Tehran during the last Iranian calendar year (March 2011-March 2012), with another sounding the alarm over a high dose of carcinogens in domestically made petrol.

"In recent days, the number of patients who have visited Tehran hospitals with heart problems has increased by 30 per cent," Aghajani said.

Heavy smog on some days in autumn and winter, due to inversion and the geographical location of Tehran, which is surrounded by mountains, is not a new phenomenon.

Besides Tehran, Iran's other major city Esfahan suffers from air pollution seriously.

The Environmental Protection Organization, auto companies, the Oil Ministry, and the entire government didn't take necessary measures despite they are all responsible for air pollution to some extent.

There has been lax observance of the regulations by ministries and auto companies, whose actions directly or indirectly affect the environment.

The auto companies do not even install catalytic converters, which clean up emissions in their cars. This is the least thing that auto companies must be forced to do.

Iran's auto companies continue to produce cars that are not fuel efficient. More importantly, experts say, the combustion system of these domestically produced cars is faulty.

On the other hand, the motorcycles also have some role in the air pollution in big cities, which experts say cause more pollution than cars.

In Tehran people have been asked to significantly decrease use of their private vehicles and to use the public transport system instead during the days of intense air pollution.

However, despite a parliamentary ratification, the administration has refused to release two billion dollars from the National Development Fund for the expansion of the Tehran Metro and the construction of subways in other big cities, in line with the plan for the development of the public transportation system.

Iran has previously had laws implemented for dealing with the problem of air pollution, however none of them worked.

The frequent repetition of air pollution in Iran shows that this is the serious problem for the country and ignorance of this issue by government and environmental organizations can cause grave troubles in the future.