Ahvaz, Iran, November 2, 2013 - A first rainfall of the season sends thousands in the world's most air polluted city to hospitals

Contents:
Introduction (4 minute read)
Coverage in International Media (7 minute read)
Coverage in Persian Language Iranian Media (35 minute read)
Conclusions (5 minute read)

Introduction:

With mention of air pollution in cities people are usually reminded of a particular few like Los Angeles, Mexico City, Delhi, Cairo or Beijing. These are of course large and important population centers but not the worst. It is rarely mentioned in the media that in worse affected areas adverse health effects can be much more severe. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) the most air polluted city in the world, and by a wide difference is city of Ahvaz (spelled Ahwaz in Arabic pronunciation) in Iran. And this is not a small town; with more than 1.3 million population it is the largest city of province of Khuzsetan located in the south western corner of the country bordering Iraq and Persian Gulf. Similar levels of pollution are suffered throughout the rest of the province of five million people, caused in part by operation of oil and gas industries here which accounts for eighty percent of the country's total, and in part by other man-made and preventable damages to the environments.

The World Health Organization ranks air pollution levels based on annual average concentration of polluting airborne particles that are smaller than ten microns in size (a micron is a millionth of a meter). This number is called Annual Mean PM10 and its physical unit is micrograms per cubic meter of air volume (a microgram is a millionth of a gram). This number does not show variations of pollution above the measured average, nor chemical compositions of the pollutants and their possible health effects, but it is used as a general measure. You can find WHO's information and databases for more than 1600 cities worldwide by entering keywords like "air pollution" and "cities" in a search engine. Looking at WHO's tables we can see that annual Mean PM10s in low double digits are common and not considered overly polluted, in high double digits and hundreds less common and in the two hundred range much less common indicating high levels of pollution.

There is only one recorded case with an Annual Mean PM10 of over three hundreds, and that is the Iranian city of Ahvaz with 372 in 2013. Three other Iranian cities are right now listed among the ten most polluted in the world. Capital Tehran's Annual Mean PM10 is close to a hundred, while because of long periods of dryness and stillness of the air actual conditions get much worse. Since 2010 with arrival of cold season the government has had to order schools and government operations and industrial activity shut and half of vehicles off the roads sometimes for days, bringing most activity in the city of fifteen million to a halt. Recently the problem has been exacerbated throughout the country by use of low quality transportation fuels having to be produced domestically because of Western-imposed sanctions on imports. In particular, concentrations of benzene, lead and sulphur have far exceeded limits that are considered allowable in countries with proper environmental regulation and enforcement. By government's own admission every year thousands of residents of the country's large cities die of illnesses directly related to air pollution [1].

Certainly in a country with a more responsible and accountable government such a problem would never have been neglected or allowed to reach such proportions without much more being done about it. You may say the people only have themselves to blame. True to a point while here, as some of the following media reports indicate, besides government's mismanagement and inaction a significant part of the pollution originates from outside the country's borders, or is otherwise compounded by Western sanctions. Otherwise Iranians, or at least many among them have fought and sacrificed for democracy and representative government for over a century now. In the uprisings of thirty five years ago leading to the revolution of 1979 too, these were the goals to the majority of the people.

On night of Saturday November second after a typically long period of dryness in Ahvaz a first autumn rainfall caused widespread shortness of breath and feeling of suffocation. In three weeks following, twenty thousand people had showed up at the city's hospitals and clinics, a hundred had been kept hospitalized and eleven taken to intensive care units. And it is certain that the real extent of health degradation caused to millions of people of this region goes much further than what can happen with a rainfall (Back to top).

Coverage in International Media:

These events were naturally news in Iranian media and coverage continued for some time. But how many people outside of this country heard about them? especially with any level of detail or background to help them make connections and form a bigger picture? The answer to the first question is very few, and to the second practically none as far as we could find. The results of a search in English language international media up to a month following the events are shown in two tables below. (This search was done using our guidelines as shown on "Contribute" page of this website - NF: No Results Found, and numbers in parentheses next to website addresses refer to links quoted at the bottom of the tables. To see the links click on the name of the media organization shown in bold. Where available, we have also included a pdf copy of the media reports which you can click to open from our site.)

(1) Report by Associated Press carried by:
Huffington Post (The link may no longer exist, however the article is an edition of the same Associated Press report carried by Fox News shown below.)
Fox News or see pdf copy
(2) Report by Independent or see pdf copy
(3) Report by France 24 Observers carried by France24 English Television or see pdf copy

* Based on legal ownership and official declarations.
** Websites not searchable. Searches can be done on subscribing media outlets.

(1) Report by Associated Press carried by The News, Mexico (The link may no longer exist, however the article is an edition of the same Associated Press report carried by Fox News.)

* Based on legal ownership and official declarations.
** Websites not searchable. Searches can be done on subscribing media outlets.

As these results show, among the many major international reporting agencies and media outlets surveyed only three were found to have made coverage of the events. Most significantly Associated Press issued a report which we can expect was carried by many subscribing outlets around the world. The French international television channel France24 and British newspaper Independent also carried their own reports.

As to what was in these reports is still less encouraging. The Associated Press's dispatch is a few sentences long quoting an Iranian newspaper that in the city of Ahvaz a rainfall had "probably" resulted in an acid rain causing "symptoms" of shortness of breath among the population, sending 5000 to hospitals where 50 had been kept. For background information it says that this city is located in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan which is dotted with oil wells and factories, and that it is one of the most polluted cities of Iran.

The Independent's report sadly seems like a re-work of Associated Press's. It shows a photo of the exhaust tailpipe on back of an old Iranian car with a burst of white smoke flowing out, although at the time of publication of this report the air pollution issue in this region has been known for some years and vehicle exhaust emissions have not been identified as a main source. Elsewhere in this report where the Associated Press's sentence says "An Iranian newspaper says more than 50 people were hospitalized ..." the Independent replaces the word "says" with "has claimed". On the other hand the Independent mentions that the city in question has a population of approximately 1.2 million, and that it is recognized by the World Health Organization as one of the most polluted in the world and not just Iran, a statement which could have a very different meaning. In any case, to a global reader new to the subject the blame would likely go to use of too many of the cars shown in the photo.

France24's report is in comparison more descriptive and context based, a difference that sadly may be traced back to differences in the histories of these media's home countries in the region. This report is done in collaboration with a freelance Iranian journalist and makes mention of the fact that the environmental pollution situation is widespread throughout the region, and that the oil industry is believed to be one of the main culprits. It provides more detail about statistics of illnesses in the country, and it includes a young Ahvazi shopkeeper's personal account of how unhealthy and depressing life has become in the city.

Other than these three reports the events were reflected in some domestic political opposition sites (with translated pages) which usually find very limited reach among general global audiences. Otherwise if you expanded your search for any international reports about the extraordinary situation of pollution in this city and region during recent years, you would only find a one-minute clip by the television service of BBC World from 2011 when Ahvaz was reaching status of the most polluted city in the world. Similar to Independent's, this very brief report skips a mention of the role of the oil industry. We should appreciate the fact however, that according to our search the Western media we have quoted here were the only ones in the world which made any original coverage at all.

Let us now try to make an estimate about how many people may have seen these reports globally. We know that worldwide more than two billion people have access to the internet now. We can therefore assume that many more, well over two billion have access to at least some type of news media. By some estimates, in the US on a typical day about 80% of people with access to news media spend some time on a coverage of public affairs, although the number who do so regularly and do so on international public affairs is expected to be much lower (report by PBS from 2007, or see pdf copy stored on our site). If optimistically we assume the same statistics of 80% daily audience attention for all global populations, and without distinction between local and international coverage, given that these reports were not part of any major newscasts or headlines anywhere, among thousands of items that were carried by thousands of outlets around the world on the particular days that these reports came out, how many people actually saw them? Perhaps in the thousands or tens of thousands. Even if we stretch our already optimistic estimate to hundreds of thousands, in relative terms this stays far below a tenth of a percent of all the people who could potentially have seen them.

But even for those who did see these reports, what did they hear about the root causes, extent and severity of effects on people's health, connections with their own economic, political and social life, or whether there may be any remedies? Stay with us for more with a look at coverage in the native language media (Back to top).

Coverage in Persian Langauge Iranian Media:

Radio Farda is a Persian language branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty funded by US Congress. It is based in Prague, Czech Republic and as an opposition outlet is listened to by millions of Iranians both inside and outside the country. This is a translation of their initial report on November 4th [2].

What does not come through Radio Farda's formally framed report is feelings of anger, loss and anxiety of people of a city and region, when they wake up to a situation like this without themselves having done anything to cause it. Tehran Emrooz is a daily newspaper which in an article the next day acknowledges the pain of the people. It starts with a heading: "Air Pollution Nightmare of Ahvaz Has Come to Reality". After stating the facts of the incident (which we have omitted in the translation) it gives a more detailed quotation from the head of the city's medical university. It then quotes from two university researchers who have done studies on the particular air pollution issue in question, and shows that even ten years on after the problem has been known and worsening, high officials in the executive and legislative branches of government can't be reached for a serious comment about it [3].

The sharp and even scornful criticism that this newspaper mounts on the government comes given what the real dimensions of the problems may be, but of course it still stays within acceptable bounds as it does not say anything about the regime as a whole; yet it must be some consolation to the readers to see that even legally operating media can raise alarms to this extent and show irritation.

The next day the government goes on defensive. The province's head of Office of Protection of Environments (equivalent to provincial branch of a Ministry of Environments) gives an interview to the newspaper that first reported the incident and was later quoted by international media. In this interview the provincial head of the environments office gives his account of how so much of the problems have been caused by Saddam Hussein's Iraq and later the US. He mentions domestic origins of the pollution problems as the other half of the issues only once. The newspaper which has so far mainly only provided a platform for the official's narrative highlights this admission with an explicit mention of "mismanagement" of domestic heavy industries and marshes [4].

Having reflected the government's side of the story, this newspaper thus makes a point that those who pressure its country for adhering to principles of respect for human rights and proper behaviour in a global civil society, according to an independent world body do not do so themselves; implying what the criticizers are really upset about is the country's stance for independence and rejection of foreign domination as expressed by the revolution thirty four years ago, circumstances which continue to impose costs on the people and create difficult challenges for the government.

That the present government is an outcome of people's uprising thirty four years ago, to ordinary Iranians is still what gives it any remaining sense of entitlement and forgiveness for its shortcomings; and these are the popular sentiments that government officials resort to when they know they have no other explanations to offer. In the face of the environmental pollution problem at issue here, the official from the executive branch has talked at length about what has been outside of his control, but said little about the domestic side of the problem when in fact he knows that the latter is the more significant one.

Only a month prior to this incident he was hosting a first "National Convention on Air Pollution: Monitoring, Effects and Prevention" in his city. In that gathering of government and academic experts he said: "The situation of air pollution in the province of Khuzestan and city of Ahvaz bears distinct characteristics in comparison to those in other metropolitan areas of the country. Take [for instance] yearly occurrences of days under hazardous or dangerous conditions. In 1391 (2012) for example, we had 254 days under hazardous conditions of which 61 days reached the dangerous zone. Also in the particular case of Ahvaz, because of presence of particulates throughout the region air pollution does not clear as one moves outside the city, as is the case in other major centers like Tehran, Esfahan, Tabriz, Karaj and Shiraz."

After this introduction he went on to list what makes the situation in his province so different. He started with the oil and gas industry: "Daily, millions of cubic feet of natural gas are burnt alongside [extracted] crude releasing hundreds of tons of pollution into the air, something that is particular to our province." He then mentioned drying of marshland in the region as the next factor, and lamented that his province should not have to suffer for being home to the country's most important revenue-generating industry (report dated October 9, 2013, website of Iranian Organisation for Protection of Environments www.doe.ir [5]).

Three weeks after the rainfall incident, final report of an investigation committee headed by the senior member of parliament for Ahvaz confirms the environments official's original assessment, and narrows down the main causes to domestic heavy industries including oil and gas. The report also presents a previuosly unnoticed fact that the pollution is reaching the province's waters too [6].

As these reports show at this point the severe and worsening pollution problem in this region has been known and acknowledged for ten years, and it is known to originate from two different sources: one foreign which the government has had no direct control over, and the other domestic from completely man-made and preventable industrial operations. The question naturally arises, what has the government done during this ten-year period? and what is it going to do now after this latest alarming emergency?

The short answer to the first question is by any reasonable standards very little. More specifically we can get a picture of the overall situation in the region and what the government has or has not done from the article translated bellow. The answer to the second question (what are the actions planned now) can also be drawn from this same article published about three months following the incident by a news agency called Mehr.

Following the acid rain emergency, in response to public anxiety about possibilities of recurrence authorities stated that they needed to determine the exact causes, and that these were very difficult to pinpoint. About three months later still no official announcements had been offered. Like the newspaper Tehran Emrooz quoted earlier, this news agency takes a bluntly critical tone and starts by pointing out that still there are not even clearly defined strategies for dealing with the problems, let alone acting on them. It then goes on to describe evidence that already exists about damages to people's health, and how the situation can only get worse, and how the government has not measured up to its responsibilities [7].

Besides the unfollowed and uncompleted steps that this reports describes, to deal with spread of particulate pollution into western Iran in June of 2013 the government had installed an "ionic shield". This Russian technology was supposed to attract and sink the airborne dust particles by creating an electromagnetic field at higher altitudes. Five months later it had not produced any significant results and by government's own admission proved a disappointment (report by IRNA, www.irna.ir, November 23, 2013 [8]).

Another measure more importanly needed for reduction of pollution in this region is collection of gases mixed with crude that burn on the numerous extraction wells throughout this province. According to the website of National Iranian South Oilfields Company (the central government-owned entity which operates the industry here, www.nisoc.ir [9]) this imperative has been recognized since the 1960s, and as is usually claimed taken more seriously by the new revolutionary government. They present a table that shows percentages of burned gas out of total gas extraction for the years of 1986 to 2001. There is a progressive drop from 57% in 1986 to 26% in 2001, but no information for the years following. The written text says that these improvements have been reached in some of the oil fields, but still in progress in others including those in the Ahvaz region. It says the goal is to bring the percentages down to 3% but gives no other specific information with regards to any plans, despite the fact that, as we heard from the provincial head of environments office earlier, burning of these giant flames of gas is the single most important factor responsible for the air pollution in this region.

In summary, from these reports and statements we can read that in the face of this actual harm and jeopardy to the health of millions of citizens, for ten years the government has done more talking and procrastinating than anything else. From the Mehr News Agency report above we can see that even to confirm the existing common sense evidence about the adverse health effects, the government defers any final assessments to results of their own studies which are held up for a sum similar to $500,000. Similarly the "Comprehensive Plan" that this report describes had somehow projected a precise figure of 52.5% of reduction in air pollution in Ahvaz in ten years and, according to the provincial environments official, to date has been 45% successful, but there are still 254 days per year of recorded unhealthy conditions in the city.

Interestingly the news agency reporting here is operated by a hardliner foundation under auspices of the Supreme Leader (called Islamic Development Organization, www.ido.ir) charged with dissemination of information and education of Islamic values of the Revolution, while the newspaper Tehran Emrooz that was quoted earlier in this article was owned by a political opponent of the previous conservative president (Ahmadinejad), and by present domestic standards a dissident outlet (It was closed in 2014 due to "shortage of paper"). You may see it as an optimistic point that these criticism are reported by the range of domestic media, however if you think openings like these may be prelude to reversals and action as they might be in more democratic contexts, not necessarily so.

First, unlike facts that are not verifiable by outside observers such as what may happen to political detainees in prisons, here the government cannot deny existence of these conditions. They need instead to show that they are aware of, and dealing with the issues. Second, there is the "relief valve" effect that has become a joke among Iranians: some "show" that the regime itself is suspected of putting on to create an impression that this is painful to them too, and that they are trying to do better. Third, in fact these reports are seen by very few among the ordinary people whose lives are at stake here, people who in any case are at the moment powerless. It is more certain however, that coverage like these are often parts of sectarian in-fighting intentionally brought out to public visibility in order to score hits on the opponents.

Theatrical nature of the government's use of media is also evident from interviews of the head of the environments office in the province, of which some have been quoted here. Depending on where and who he is talking to, he takes completely different angles and goes through different sets of information. Why for example in his interview immediately after the acid rain emergency didn't he mention the domestic sources of the pollution as the main cause? He now acknowledges the oil industry as the main source but complains about inaction and lack of co-ordination within the government as obstacles that have hampered the efforts (the Comprehensive Plan) for ten years. If we are to take recognition and acknowledgement of these shortcomings as signs that they are about to be overcome, probably not, because now the Plan itself needs to be revised; and not to worry, as that is being done too; only there are no other details or a time frame that he can add.

More optimistically, we can interpret these reports as signs that the government does intend to do more. Election of a new president who declares himself a moderate and intent on correcting negligent ways and corruption of the past two terms, as well as possibilities for better relations with the West and easing of economic sanctions give them better ability to act; although generally the extent to which this regime is willing or capable of tackling enormous social and economic problems facing Iran today is at best a subject of debate. With regards to our subject matter here, air pollution in this province, we do have the ability to look at reality on the ground and where it goes. We will allow several more months for possible results and do so in the summer of 2014.

Before going there though, if you were asking whether the "precise causes" of the acid rain incidents were ever found, according to the report below they were, and "incidentally" only a week following publication of the above highly critical report in the media, which asked that question again in its closing [10].

A closer examination shows that this report does not in fact contain any significant new information and furthermore, it too is highly coded and constructed. The official making the announcement is higher than the provincial one we have been hearing from, a deputy director in the central administration in the capital responsible for "human living environments" i.e. environments where people live, and he makes some sympathetic references to people's health, something that his department head had earlier refused to talk about referring the matter to the Ministry of Health.

As for the precise causes of the acid rain effect being the main purpose of his announcement, the official cites two gases that have been emitting in the region's air. He says his department has talked to the Ministry of Petroleum for controlling sources of these emissions, and "achieved some success" too; but he closes by saying that they have moved on their best estimates and that the exact sources may never be known, from which statement we can conclude that there can be no guarantees about the final results.

The two gases that this official cites are scientifically known to be side effects of burning oil and gas, and always the first suspects as regards acid rain incidents. You can easily read about this point in lay language by entering keywords like "petroleum environment sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide" in a search engine. These gases can result from other processes too, like vehicle exhaust and other industrial activity, but given predominance of petroleum production activity in this region, simple logic makes these industries the most obvious suspects.

Given the urgency of the situation, why then did the environments department need three months to notice this fact of science and the logical conclusions that flow from it to move and initiate co-operative plans with the Ministry of Petroleum? Was any of these plans already included in the "Comprehensive Plan" that was in the works for ten years and legislated three years ago? In any case what does "some success" exactly mean?

Let us move forward in time to the next summer in 2014 to see what "some success" really meant. With respect to the foreign-originated haze pollution, though not under government's direct control, we find a report by the same Mehr News Agency on July 14th 2014 titled "Air pollution in Khuzestan has reached 25 times the allowable limits". In the body of the report we can read:

"... According to international standards the maximum allowable limit for particulate matter [air] pollution is 150 micrograms per cubic meter, while the actual density in the town of Dezfool reached 3,656 or 25 times the allowable limit today ...Streets of the province's towns and cities are nearly empty today and silence dominates everywhere. The skies look yellow and people have difficulty breathing ...Spokesperson for the environmental protection office said measured concentrations of particulate haze [in some of the province's towns] are: Dezfool: 3656, Masjed-e Soleyman: 2100, Mahshahr: 1695, Shadegan: 1241 and Ahvaz: 1200 micrograms per cubic meter." (report by Mehr News Agency www.mehrnews.com, July 14, 2014 [11])

A search for any news of progress on the government's plans for controls on the domestic side of the pollution turned no results. On the contrary, on August 29th we find the provincial head of the environments office, while consoling the people about the spreading haze problem as he usually finds a way to do, telling his interviewer that the situation in the Ahvaz region needs "immediate attention"; and to make his point he invokes the image of burning torches on the oil wells:

"... Fortunately in the water years of 2012-13 and 2013-14 we had good precipitation including a 70% increase in Iraq. This resulted in refilling of marshes in Khuzestan and subsequently a significant decrease in particulate matter pollution.

With drop in spread of particulates we have had something like ten days or less of haze conditions in the past five months, while in comparison we had more than forty days during the same period last year. The concentration [of haze conditions] has dropped too; it could have been more than ten thousand micrograms per cubic meter before, while now it is rarely more than a thousand.

Ahvaz needs immediate attention:

[Quote continued] If you take an air flight over Khuzestan, you will be looking at flames of burning crude because of the extensive petroleum production activity here. Coupled with spreading haze, these conditions can take the pollution beyond limits of the province." (report by Mizan News Agency www.mizanpress.ir, August 29, 2014 [12]) (Back to top)

Conclusions:

My mother's family are entirely from Ahvaz. She always likes to tell us that on her mother's side she had nine uncles and four aunts, and on her father's side six uncles and one aunt. Four generations later we must have more cousins and grandcousins than I would venture to count. When I heard the news of acid rain in Ahvaz last November, in my weekly phone conversation with my mother I asked her how our family were doing there. "Very few are still there, the majority have left" she said. I wasn't surprised. Move in our family started with my grandfather who got an assignment in Tehran in the 50s. Younger siblings would sometimes follow during the next decades, but the war with Iraq created a new and less avoidable necessity. After war's end home never became home again for most of those who had left.

Our family were among those who had the means and will to leave, but what about those who could not or did not want to? We all know how it feels to step out in a clear morning and take a deep breath of fresh air that reminds us how wonderful it is to be alive with a healthy mind and a healthy body. Isn't it injustice to be deprived of this only because you happened to be born in a wrong place?

The environmental pollution in this region is not, as is usually the case, an inevitable outcome of otherwise beneficial and necessary products of technology, but rather a result of two other conditions: one, operation of a very large petroleum industry in the midst of populated areas at very substandard levels for over a century, and two: three decades of almost continuous war and armed conflict.

Underground resources of crude oil were discovered here by British commercial interests in 1908. Since then this particular region has consistently supplied one of the largest shares of global demand for petroleum²; energy that made the twentieth century however different it became from all centuries past, whether one counts possibilities it opened for operation of other new technologies, or the fact that we even exist, as a four-fold increase in world population would not have happened without this source of energy. At the most basic level we should ask why these conditions should be the outcome for the people who happened to be living above these resources.

Since 1980 this region has seen four wars followed by internal conflict involving some of the world's largest armies and use of destructive weaponry including chemical and nuclear and scorched earth. Anyone with a real understanding of this region would tell you that there are causal links between these tragedies going back to the first, the war between Iran and Iraq. That war itself would not have happened, at least not at such length and breadth, had there not been two regimes that had sprung so much as a reaction to a long history of mainly self-interested control and interference from the outside³.

In 2014 spending time on the matter of unhealthy breathing air for the people of an Iranian province may seem like a luxury compared to what these people's neighbours are subjected to in adjacent Metsapotemia and Levant. But aren't these issues in fact all connected? and connected with us? I would say we should spend time on all of them.

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Footnotes

1. The Iranian calendar is a solar one and synchronises with the Gregorian calendar. It starts from "hijra" or migration of Prophet Muhammad of Islam from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD, and the year changes on March 21st (beginning of spring). To convert from the Iranian year to the Gregorian year if the date is in winter one must add 622 to the Iranian year, and 621 if it is in other seasons. In this article unless the date was specified for simplicity we have always added 621.

2. According to OPEC data since 1960s Iran has supplied between five to ten percent of global petroleum consumption. During the first half of the century this share is estimated to have been similar.

3. The histories of these wars and their makings and of petroleum business in this region, as most readers would know are long and deserving of their own articles. Less well known is how differently these histories are seen and felt by the people of this region compared to what, if any is commonly presented in the West. For an indication of things to come with discovery of reserves in southern Iran, one needs only to look at the events in the following few years. In those days state of separation between the private enterprise and government in Britain was such that upon the discovery, the explorers' first act of celebration was to cable the embassy in Tehran and break the news by citing some verses of the Bible that contained references to the substance. Three years later in 1911 oil was in production, but it was not yet the ordinary people even at home in Britain who were going to see the benefits. As Britain was in a naval race with Germany, the government converted the navy fleet from coal to oil-fueled, and on initiative of First Lord of Admiralty Winston Churchill acquired controlling interest in the oil company. I am sure I have seen a quote from Churchill somewhere that said: "We won the war with Persian oil" ("the war" being the First World War of 1914-18), but I could not find this phrase anywhere on the internet; perhaps because it "shouldn't be" on the internet. In any case there is something similar from Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon who said: "The Allies floated to victory on a wave of oil." During the same war won with Persian oil, despite Iran's declared neutrality, for reasons having more to do with empire-building than defence Britain occupied this country militarily, and as has recently been researched, in all probability by buying hoarded wheat and other foodstuff at high prices caused many more starvations during a time of severe drought there (The Great Famine and Genocide in Iran, Mohammad Gholi Majd, University Press of America, 2013). The First World War, about which historians' opinions have ranged from unnecessary to stupid, was of course not much kinder to millions of others in Europe and elsewhere who faithfully obeyed the marching orders. A century later still, how much of the security threats and the wars and the backlashes, economic sanctions and the negotiations and the back and forth and the media coverage thereof are about the people who have to live with the consequences, and how much are they really about the leaders and rulers themselves? A century later, these facts of history so painful and impactful on so many of us are also still only a matter for academic recitation to a small number back in Britain, and you can read about them in more detail with keyword searches in www.historytoday.com.

Links to originals of translated content:

[1] In this report Ministry of Health data are quoted indicating that in each of the country's three largest cities every year several thousand people die of illnesses directly caused by air pollution. According to the same report the Ministry has not published data for other cities including Ahvaz where pollution is worse. You can also see a pdf copy of this report stored on our site.
[2] Report by Radio Farda or see a pdf copy stored on our site
[3] Report by Tehran_e Emrooz (This newspaper was later closed and this link no longer exists. A site called Salamat News carried the full article, or see a pdf copy stored on our site.)
[4] Report by Arman Daily or see a pdf copy stored on our site.
[5] Report by Department of Environment or see a pdf copy stored on our site.
[6] Report by icana.ir or see a pdf copy stored on our site.
[7] Report by Mehr News or see a pdf copy stored on our site.
[8] Report by IRNA or see a pdf copy stored on our site.
[9] Report by nisoc.ir or see a pdf copy stored on our site.
[10] Report by Tabnak or see a pdf copy stored on our site
[11] Report by Mehr News or see a or pdf copy stored on our site.
[12] Report by Mizan or see a pdf copy stored on our site.

Image attributions:

Map of Iran: UN maps: un.org/Depts/Cartographic/english/htmain.htm
View of street in Ahvaz: farsnews.com
Woman walking in Ahvaz: khnews.ir
Woman hospitalised in Ahvaz: danakhabar.com
Ahmad Reza Lahijanzadeh (Khuzestan environment office): isdle.ir
Masoumeh Ebtekar (Organisation for Protection of Environments): shooshan.ir
Man crossing street in Ahvaz: seemorgh.com
Industrial waste gas emission near Ahvaz: isna.ir
Bridge and pedestrain in Ahvaz: irna.ir
Flames of burning gas atop oil wells: vista.ir
View of city and industrial waste gas emissions: irna.ir
Women walking with covered nostrils and men in clinics: irinn
Child in clinic with oxygen mask: hamishemadarane.blogfa.com