More than 400 people have been killed by smog in under a month after a lethal blanket of pollution smothered the capital of Iran, it has emerged.

Schools have been shut while millions have been forced to wear face masks or retreat indoors after choking levels of pollution descended on Tehran.

As many as 412 citizens have died in the past 23 days and authorities have rolled out a series of unprecedented emergency measures.

More than 400 people have been killed by smog in under a month after a lethal blanket of pollution smothered the capital of Iran, it has emerged

Exhaust fumes from millions of cars and motorcycles that ply Tehran's roads account for 80 percent of its pollution, which increases in winter as emissions fail to rise above cold air

All of the city's schools were due to have been shut today while tourism bosses have even apologised to foreign visitors for the pollution.

A blanket of brown-white smog descended on the capital on Sunday, blocking views of the mountains that line its northern edge and forcing many of its 14 million residents to stay indoors.

The pollution in Tehran hit 156 on the Air Quality Index of deadly airborne particles, over the 150 considered 'unhealthy' for the general public. In tourist hotspot Isfahan the level hit 167.

Officials apologised to foreign visitors for the bleak conditions.

'We hope our people's hospitality wipes the grey image of Tehran's beautiful attractions from their minds,' the capital's tourism boss Rajab Ali Khosroabadi told the ISNA news agency.

Kindergartens and primary schools in Tehran were ordered to stay closed Monday and Tuesday, and traffic restrictions were tightened.

A blanket of brown-white smog descended on the capital on Sunday, blocking views of the mountains that line its northern edge and forcing many of its 14 million residents to stay indoors

Schools have been shut while millions have been forced to wear face masks or retreat indoors after choking levels of pollution descended on Tehran

Ambulances were deployed to wait in the busiest and dirtiest areas amid warnings that children, the elderly and those with existing health conditions were at particular risk.

'Since no one does anything, every year the problem gets worse. The government should block old cars. We must improve public transport,' Zeynab Nazari, a first-year sociology student, told AFP.

Every year, Tehran suffers some of the worst pollution in the world when cool autumn temperatures cause an effect known as 'temperature inversion'.

The phenomenon creates a layer of warm air above the city that traps pollution from some 10 million cars and motorbikes.

The latest smog cloud is expected to hang over the city until today when forecasters hope winds will move the stagnant air, an official told state television.

Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf rode the metro to work Sunday in a bid to encourage people to use public transport.

The pollution in Tehran hit 156 on the Air Quality Index of deadly airborne particles, over the 150 considered 'unhealthy' for the general public. In tourist hotspot Isfahan the level hit 167

The phenomenon creates a layer of warm air above the city that traps pollution from some 10 million cars and motorbikes

Despite having around 100 stations, Ghalibaf says the metro is not sufficiently funded by central government, forcing millions to rely on cars.

Pollution has become a political football in recent years, with conservatives and reformists blaming each other for the problem.

Hardliners accuse reformist vice-president Massoumeh Ebtekar, who heads the environmental protection agency, of not doing enough.

Ultra-conservative daily Vatane Emrooz said Monday that 70 percent of deaths in Tehran were linked to pollution.

Ebtekar, in an Instagram post, said various measures to reduce factory pollution and provide cleaner petrol had led to 'significant' improvement.

Still, weather conditions and heavy congestion remain a blight.

Two traffic restriction zones -- introduced in 1979 and 2005 -- have done little to solve the problem.

Local carmakers have been reluctant to introduce cleaner engines, while foreign firms have been kept out by international sanctions.

In 2014, almost 400 people were hospitalised with heart and respiratory problems caused by pollution in Tehran. Nearly 1,500 others required treatment.</s>At this time of the year, citizens of Tehran are accustomed to a thick curtain of fog that falls across the city, veiling everything from the 435 metre-tall Milad tower to the nearby Alborz mountains.

This week, however, the blanket of smog smothering the Iranian capital has been blamed for a string of deaths and prompted unprecedented emergency measures by the city’s authorities.

Habib Kashani, a member of Tehran’s municipal council, said on Tuesday that pollution in Tehran had led to the death of 412 citizens in the past 23 days, according to the state news agency, Irna.

City authorities announced that all schools would be closed on Wednesday.

The concentration of ultra-fine airborne particles (known as PM2.5) reached more than 150 this week, setting a new record. These particles of less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter can penetrate the lungs and pass into the bloodstream and have been linked to increased rates of chronic bronchitis, lung cancer and heart disease.

Irna reported that on four of the past six days, air quality reached dangerous levels for people suffering from respiratory diseases, and on two days it was dangerous for everyone.

PM2.5 levels are seen as the best measure of the impact of air pollution on health. The new World Health Organisation database of worldwide air pollution measures, released in May, put the Iranian city of Zabol, on the eastern border with Afghanistan, as the world’s most polluted city, based on PM2.5.



Pollution is a perennial problem in Tehran, which is surrounded by mountains and has little wind to disperse the smog. Millions of cars throng the city’s congested streets, and locally refined petrol has also been blamed as a key polluting factor.

The issue dominated newspaper front pages in Tehran on Tuesday. Ebtekar daily published a large picture of a smog-cloaked Tehran, carrying the headline “My city has been lost”, and called for a reduction in the number of cars.



“Every day 3m inner city commutes by the metro and 4m such journeys by taxi have not resolved the capital’s air pollution crisis,” it said. According to Ebtekar, at least 1.25m obsolete cars were still in use in Tehran and 60% of cars in the city normally carry just one person.

The reformist daily Etemaad published a black column on its front page saying that “We are all to blame”. It said Tehran was suffocating because “we [the media] are not able to hold the authorities accountable”, “you are not switching off your cars” and “they [officials] are only capable of closing schools”.

The celebrated film-maker Dariush Mehrjui told Isna news agency that he had moved out of Tehran because of its pollution. “I can’t breathe in Tehran, simple as that. Everyone is fleeing Tehran ... everyone is choking, look at cancer rates. Who can live [in Tehran] under these circumstances?”</s>Hundreds of deaths are being blamed on the thick, hazy smog that has choked Iran's capital this month, as Iranian officials scramble for solutions to the city's ever-growing pollution crisis.

It's so severe that Iran's Supreme Leader has even weighed in, calling on Iranians to stop driving their personal vehicles during days when pollution levels are high.

Smog isn't unusual in Tehran, particularly at this time of the year. The city is surrounded by mountains and suffers from chronic traffic jams, with low rainfall and a lack of strong wind streams. As a result, the city's landscape acts as a sort of funnel, with heavy emissions from millions of vehicles unable to escape the city.

The result is a choking, thick haze that blankets the city, often obscuring the city's prominent landmarks. Although Tehran's air pollution is common, this week, Iranian officials have issued a series of dire warnings, suggesting the crisis is far worse than any the city has previously faced.

In a story carried by Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency, a local city council member Habib Kashani said that poor air quality was a factor in four hundred deaths occurred in the city in roughly the last three weeks. In an emergency response, Tehran's schools were closed on Tuesday and Wednesday, keeping children at home in an attempt to lower the number of vehicles on the streets. Iran's official IRNA news agency reported that air quality has been at dangerous levels in four of the last six days for anyone with pre-existing breathing conditions. An Iranian motorcyclist even posted a photo on Instagram wearing his biker's helmet and a gas mask, with the caption "My city is better than yours, my air better than yours." He added an emoji of gas masks. My city, is better than yours, it's air, is better than yours 😷 ____________________________________ #mycity #tehran #tehranpic #beautifulday #pollution #air #wonderfulplaces #amazing #weather #headache #yolo #getoutside #go #fun #picoftheday #instadaily #mood #instamood #ig_mood #ig_today #pictures #photo #photooftheday #instagood #igersdaily #mask #o #selfie On Wednesday, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani addressed the pollution concerns directly in a speech in the country's mountainous Alborz province. In comments carried by Iran's Mehr News Agency, he said his government had "issued relevant orders for necessary decisions to be taken immediately" and that more than eight hundred thousand older vehicles had been taken off Iran's traffic-clogged streets in the past three years. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's own website even has a section on Islamic rulings that have to do with heavy pollution. They come in the form of answers to questions about the best way ordinary Iranians should deal with pollution in the country's capital. In one response, he discouraged his religious followers from driving a high-emissions vehicle that could worsen air pollution. A second question asked: "What is the verdict for using personal transportation rather than public transportation during times when the city's air is pollution?" The response said that in an emergency situation, when adding more cars to the roads would worsen the pollution, driving a personal vehicle would be tantamount to committing "a forbidden act." "Therefore, if officials ask people to not use their personal vehicles," it said, "that (request) should be heeded.</s>The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is policing the deal, said Iran's overstepping of the limit on its stock of a sensitive material for the second time this year risked undermining countries' support for the agreement.

The victory of Donald Trump - a vocal critic of the deal - in the U.S. presidential election also raised the question of whether his country would continue to support the accord, which restricts Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

"Iran must strictly adhere to all commitments and technical measures for their duration," U.S. ambassador to the IAEA Laura Holgate said in a statement to the agency's quarterly Board of Governors meeting.

The dispute centers on the part of the deal between Tehran and six major powers that limits Iran's stock of heavy water, a material used as a moderator in reactors like the unfinished one it has at Arak that has been put out of use.

In contrast to strict limits elsewhere in the deal on materials including enriched uranium, the text says Iran should not have more heavy water than it needs, adding that those needs are estimated to be 130 tonnes. Western countries see it as a hard limit, and Iran argues it is not.

"We note with concern Iran's accumulation of heavy water in excess of the limit set forth in the JCPOA of 130 metric tonnes," Holgate said, using the abbreviation for the deal's full name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The IAEA said Iran was preparing to ship some heavy water out of the country to come back under the 130-tonne limit, but Holgate said Iran would not be in compliance until it had been delivered to a foreign buyer as the deal requires.

"Simply notifying states that this heavy water is for sale without removing it from Iran does not fulfill this JCPOA commitment," she said.

Iran said the issue was not that clear-cut.

"Where is (the) limit?" Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, told reporters on the sidelines of the board meeting, adding that the country was preparing to export more than the 5 tonnes of heavy water it originally informed the IAEA of.

"The JCPOA is very clear," he added. "It says that the needs of Iran are estimated (to be) 130 tonnes. Who is the native English speaker to tell me what estimated means?"
As many as 412 people have died in the last 23 days due to smog in Tehran, according to Iran's Health Ministry. All schools in the city have also been ordered to close as part of emergency measures.