PBS - Tehran's "Armageddon Haze" Lingered For Months, Despite All Attempts To Mitigate Effects

[hatrack]

As snow covers Tehran and bogs down its infamous traffic even more, Neda, a 30-year-old housewife, is "simply happy." She says, "I know I am going to be stuck in traffic, but I can breathe. It is great to have some clean air after so long." And clean air is indeed a rare luxury in the capital. Only a few weeks ago a dark grey haze hovered over the city. The air pollution index reached new heights and lung-related health problems soared. Pejman, 25, a student, describes the haze as an "ominous gloomy cloud. It scared me. It was like the clouds in one of those Armageddon movies Hollywood makes. It was like a sign of the end of the world."

The haze was everywhere from the western suburbs, where the air quality is usually bearable, to Imam Khomeini International airport in the south, where the Tehran valley opens out. There was no wind to break it up or push it away," complained Akbar, 45, a cab driver who lives in Shahriar, southwest of Tehran. "We always have wind in Shahriar, but there was none. The air was still, no motion, no nothing." He wore a mask every day. "I have to work in downtown and around Azadi Square, a transportation hub in the west of Tehran. I could not breathe without one," he said. Although Akbar is used to Tehran's pollution, on this occasion it was a challenge. "All the time, I felt a strange taste in my mouth. My throat became infected and I had to take antibiotics."

The thick gray cloud of smog blanketed the city for almost two months. The government implemented "even-odd" driving restrictions. It banned cars with plates ending in odd numbers from use on Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays; cars with even-numbered plates were similarly banned on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. The penalty for disobedience was a hefty $13 per hour. Alireza, a shopkeeper in central Tehran, paid many such tickets. "I had to take my car -- there was no other way to get to work. The officer at the highway entrance would pull me over and write me a ticket. By the time I arrived at work, an hour would have passed. The officer there would pull me over again and write me another ticket." The measure was implemented rigorously; several individuals showed Tehran Bureau their tickets. However the air pollution index did not improve. Desperate situations require desperate measures. The government organized an aerial operation. Airplanes flew over Tehran, spraying water to wash down pollutant particles. "It is a joke," Masoomeh Ebtekar, a city council member, wrote in her weblog. "Tehran covers an 800 sq km area, it is a vast area and spraying water over it is useless." Small planes usually used for agricultural purposes were employed. As another blogger wrote, "Those airplanes are for flying a few dozen feet above the ground and spraying water on farms, not for spraying a metropolitan area from 1,000 feet." The water vaporized almost instantly. The air remained polluted.

Headlines in pro-government media promised relief in the form of rain and wind. None came. As the air pollution index remained in the red zone, authorities became increasingly alarmed. Committees were formed and officials met behind closed doors to discuss the crisis. Some information leaked out to the public. In a meeting with members of the Majles, Iran's parliament, Health Ministry officials revealed that the deaths of at least 3,641 individuals were related to the pollution. The information was released by Vahid Norouzi, head of the Tehran Emission Test Center. In Avay-e Sabz, his environmental issues blog, he wrote, "The health department representative gave the number and broke it down for different pollutants. He did not say the number was confidential, although last year the statistics were categorized as classified information." His report was immediately contested by Health Minister Vahideh Dastjerdi, who told reporters that her department does not think the number is "valid." She acknowledged, however, that the number of emergency calls for cardiac problems increased by 16 percent during the crisis and calls for pulmonary problems rose 30 percent.

EDIT

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/01/the-armageddon-haze.html

[Kaleva]

1. Very interesting. Thanks for posting! Rec'd

[Jokinomx]

2. Wow... I would think events like this will continue to plague our planet

Remember the giant cloud that hung over China a couple of years ago... Mexico city is constantly in the smog.... I used to live in Salt Lake city where they would never call it smog...they called it "the inversion".

However, this sounds as though it is taking smog to a new level.

Peace

[txlibdem]

3. LA in the 70s, 80s was so thick with smog you couldn't see the city

I remember driving back from vacation in Las Vegas, as you start the descent from the high desert you can see the entire valley. This was back in the 80s the last time I took that drive. It was like there was a thick brown blanket over the entire valley, you couldn't see anything but hilltops sticking above it here and there. Environmental rules have corrected that situation in California.

What do you get when "the government meddles" in peoples' lives? Air you can actually see through.

[pscot]

4. Higher gas prices

may have something to do with it. Last month the government allowed big increases in the price of fuel, electricity, bread and water. Gas has gone from as cheap as 10 cents/gal to as much as $2.80.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/middle-east/110118/iran-economy-subsidy-cuts-ahmadinejad