Tehran’s Air Quality Deteriorates Again
Tehran became foul-smelling again, and people wore masks on Wednesday. Officials from the Tehran Municipality’s Environmental Affairs Department said the unpleasant odor was likely caused by sulfur dioxide gas. The Tehran Province Governorate attributed one of the causes to 7,000 tons of waste accumulated at Aradkuh landfill.
Unlike previous months when the cause and source of the unpleasant odor were unclear, field investigations by the Tehran Governorate’s monitoring task force revealed that the unpleasant odor on today, December 25 (January 15), in Tehran was caused by sulfur dioxide resulting from fuel oil combustion in some factories located in south Tehran, as well as waste accumulation at the Aradkuh waste disposal site.
More than 7,000 tons of Tehran’s waste are collected daily at the Aradkuh site.
Aradkuh is an area located 11 kilometers from Imam Khomeini Airport in the south of the capital, which has been selected as Tehran’s waste disposal site for 56 years.
Nearly 7,000 tons of Tehran’s waste daily, along with 1,000 tons of waste from the cities of Robat Karim and Baharestan, are buried in this area without any recycling, and for this reason, when winds blow from the south of the capital, the unpleasant odor from this waste disposal site spreads across the Tehran metropolitan area.
ISNA reported that when air humidity increases, the combination of humidity load and sulfur dioxide gas makes Tehran’s air unpleasant.
Sulfur gas is likely the source of the unpleasant odor
The Director General of Environmental Affairs and Sustainable Development of the Tehran Municipality also said on Wednesday that sulfur gas is likely the source of the unpleasant odor in Tehran’s air today.
Shina Ansari told ISNA that after receiving new reports of the odor’s reappearance in some areas of Tehran, they activated gas monitoring devices, and two teams are conducting sampling in districts 6 and 7 of Tehran.
It was agreed that sampling would be conducted in different areas so that experts could reach a definitive conclusion about the “source and origin” of this unpleasant odor.
The Director General of Environmental Affairs and Sustainable Development of the Tehran Municipality did not confirm with certainty but suggested that the source of the unpleasant odor on Wednesday in the capital might be sulfur.
Following the spread of unpleasant odor in December 2019, the Air Pollution Research Center affiliated with the Environmental Research Institute of Tehran University of Medical Sciences published a report on “discovering potential sources of odor emission centers across the capital” and showed that “very likely” the source of this odor is sulfur-containing gases emitted from various centers in the south and southeast of the capital.
It was the first time on the afternoon of December 12, 2018, that an unpleasant odor changed the atmosphere of Tehran. Officials from related organizations initially said it was sewage odor, but as the cause and exact location of the odor’s spread remained unclear, many rumors circulated; some attributed it to the collapsed Plasco Building while others blamed polluting industries around Tehran, and some pointed to the leachate from the Aradkuh waste disposal center and the chemical substance mercaptan. Mercaptan is a chemical substance used in various industries including paint manufacturing. This substance is also injected into city gas.
Until the experts from the Tehran Municipality’s Environmental Affairs and Sustainable Development Department complete their investigation, capital residents should wait and for now wear masks.
Source: DW
