Tehran, Iran, June 9

Araz News via trend: On the rise for a couple of days, air pollution in the Iranian metropolis Tehran has reached its worst as a new wave of pollutant particles has settled in.

Sources said the density of particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter in the air has reached 135. The air was announced unhealthy for sensitive groups for the day, Nasim news agency reported June 9.

The city’s districts 11 and 19 with pollution densities of 173 were the worst hit areas.

Tehran, with its population of 12 million people, is one of the most polluted cities in the world.

In one of the most severe instances of air pollution in the city, almost 400 people were hospitalized with heart and respiratory problems caused by heavy air pollution on December 31, 2014.

“Air pollution has now emerged as a silent killer with an impact which is four times greater than that of HIV/AIDS,” Gary Lewis, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in the Islamic Republic of Iran said in January.

A recent report by the Tehran Air Quality Control Company (AQCC) which provided statistics on the city’s air quality in the past 16 years revealed there have been 1688 unclean days that by far outnumber the only 219 clean days out of 5840 during the period.

By Mehdi Sepahvand

Reprinted from trend.az