One of Tehran’s signature landscapes — the imposing, rugged line of
the Alborz Mountains at the city’s northern boundary — has suddenly
become an elusive one. Instead, Tehranis’ eyes, and complaints, have
turned toward a dense and noxious wall of smog that has only rarely
lifted during the past two months.
“I had an eye infection for two consecutive weeks,” said Azadeh Kimiyai,
a 32-year-old public relations manager, describing one of the health
problems residents have complained about over the past month, a long
list that includes headaches, dizziness and fatigue. “Two of my
colleagues had the same problem. The pharmacist told us it was caused by
the pollution.”
After initially issuing flat denials of a problem and then blaming a
typical winter temperature inversion — despite above-average
temperatures throughout November and early December — the Iranian
government has since resorted to drastic compensatory measures like
sudden two-day public holidays and harsh traffic-control directives.
But even as such measures have begun to counter the worst of the
pollution, a trickle of recent statements from politicians and officials
have raised suspicions that the smog is of Iran’s own making, as
officials ordered at least five of the country’s major petrochemical
plants to switch production to gasoline after Western pressure led many
of the world’s top refining companies to cut off Iran’s imports.
According to e-mails circulated to industry experts and reproduced on
unofficial news sites and blogs, Iran’s new supply of domestic gasoline
may contain high levels of aromatics — more than twice the level
permitted by Iranian law. Burning aromatics in car engines produces
exhaust packed with high concentrations of “floating particles” or
“particulates” that, added to the typical smog caused by nitrous oxides
and ozone, can cause a range of health problems, from headaches and
dizziness to more serious cardiac and respiratory complaints.
“Previous governments knew that petrochemical plants could produce this
kind of gasoline,” said an oil industry
expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of
retribution. “But Ahmadinejad has gone ahead and done it — despite the
consequences — for his own populist and political reasons,” he said,
referring to President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.
Abdolhossein Bayat, the managing director of Iran’s National
Petrochemical Company, told the state news media that pollution in the
capital was unrelated to the gasoline being produced by petrochemical
complexes, stating that the domestic product met and even exceeded
international standards.
But Mohammad-Reza Rezai, a member of Parliament who supports the
Ahmadinejad administration, seemed to acknowledge that the government
had increased domestic production of gasoline and that dangerous levels
of air pollution were a price worth paying to maintain Iran’s
independence from foreign powers.
“The increase in pollution is natural but, unfortunately, there are some
who fail to see the main issue,” he said in comments delivered to
Parliament on Monday and published on the unofficial Asr Iran news Web
site. “The important thing is that we have begun to produce gasoline,
and this is a very valuable thing.”
“Without a doubt there are problems and impurities,” he added, “but with
continued production the problems will be solved and we will achieve
production of standard gasoline.”
Despite having the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves, Iran has
failed to expand its aging refineries to accommodate the nation’s
rapidly expanding demand for gasoline, an appetite that has been whetted
by low subsidized prices and a rapidly growing population of young
adults who crave the independence that a motor vehicle provides.
Fuel
prices were raised drastically on Sunday, as Tehran tries to phase
out subsidies. But the roads remained jammed nonetheless, despite
unconfirmed reports of a truckers’ strike, and after a marked
improvement in Tehran’s air quality in recent days — after consecutive
weeks of public holidays and traffic controls — the government has
resumed issuing warnings about unsafe levels of particulates.
While continuing to deny that home-produced gasoline could have anything
to do with record-breaking pollution levels, members of the Ahmadinejad
administration have admitted that public health is at greater risk than
ever before. Late last month, Health Minister Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi
reported a 30 percent increase in pollution-related health problems and
an 18 percent increase in emergency hospital admissions, though she did
not say over what period.
However, within days, an official in Tehran’s municipal government
leaked Health Ministry statistics for pollution-related deaths on his
personal Web site — more than 3,600 in the first nine months of the
Iranian calendar year — figures that until now had never been released
to the Iranian public.
With pollution warnings this year lasting for weeks on end, the
possibility that the Ahmadinejad administration had achieved a partial
victory over international sanctions at the cost of public health has
alarmed industry experts and Tehran residents alike.
“If independence comes at the cost of people’s health, it’s not worth it
at all,” Ms. Kimiyai said. “Instead of that, they should give up on
some of their stupid demands on the international scene.”
(from "International Herald Tribune", Dec. 23, 2010)