Air Pollution in Tehran

Abstract

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Temporal variations of ambient air pollutants and meteorological influences on their concentrations in Tehran during 2012–2017

“…low sulfur diesel), phasing out of old/carburetor equipped vehicles, the mandatory use of diesel particulate filter, vehicle catalyst replacement, adopting EURO norms, conversion of diesel engines to compressed natural gas, as well as the extending public transportation, particularly subway and bus rapid transit 7,22,23 . As reported by Tehran Air Quality Control Company (TAQCC), during the period 2014-2017, the sulfur content of gasoline and diesel distributed in Tehran megacity was decreased from 200 and 7000 ppm to approximately 20 and less than 50 ppm, respectively 24 . The rising annual trend of NO 2 as one of the most important road traffic emissions can be related to the increase of total number of vehicles in Tehran over time, because the number of registered vehicles in Tehran increased from around 3.8 million in 2012 to approximately 4.5 million in 2015 7 .…”

“…In reality, similar to PM 2.5 , NO 2 is used as an important marker for combustion emissions, especially from road traffic and its decrease on weekend represents the reduction of traffic 40 . Similar to ambient PM 10 and PM 2.5 , hourly variation of NO 2 and CO clearly exhibited two peaks and two valleys, mainly reflecting the effect of traffic emissions and meteorological conditions on CO and NO 2 during a day 24,37,44,47,48 . After the observed peaks at 7:00 and 8:00, the concentrations of CO and NO 2 started to decrease and reached their lowest concentrations at 14:00 and 15:00 due to a combination of increasing boundary layer height, WS, SR and photochemical reactions in order to produce O 3 coupled with decreasing vehicle traffic emissions as evident by decreased ambient NO 2 29,45,49 .…”

“…Here, we considered Saturday to Thursday as weekdays/working days and Friday as weekend 3 . In Tehran, by beginning of the working days, vehicle traffic and other emission sources significantly increase mainly due to rising activity of Tehran citizens and daily commuters from other cities of Iran, about 3.5 million commuters 24,25,37 . Therefore, daily mean concentrations of PM 2.5 and PM 10 start to increase and reach their peaks at approximately 33.9 and 88.6 μg m −3 on Wednesday, respectively.…”

“…In Tehran, major sources of criteria air pollutants, with the exception of O 3 as a secondary air pollutant, have previously been reported arising from road traffic-related emissions (the highest contribution for CO, PM 2.5 and NO X ), industrial activities (as the important emission sources of SO 2 , PM and NO X ), energy conversion sector (as another important contributor for NO X and PM emissions and the most notable contributor for SO 2 ), as well as household and commercial sectors (as the other contributors for NO X emissions) 10,11,55 . Therefore, based on the successful short-and long-term programs in other megacities of developed and developing countries 24,56,57 , we recommend a policy mix in order to improve the air quality situation in Tehran megacity: (1) the heavy-and light-duty vehicles (HDVs and LDVs) replacement program via providing financial incentives to owners of old vehicles to trade them with new/less polluting ones;…”

Mortality rates due to respiratory tract diseases in Tehran, Iran during 2008–2018: a spatiotemporal, cross-sectional study

“…1). According to the latest estimations 2019, the population varies between 8,680,000 at night and around 10,000,000 daytime [40,41]. It covers an area of 730 km 2 with a population density of 11,890 per km 2 [40].…”