25,000 Polluting Vehicles Scrapped in One Month

In the last month of summer (ended Sept. 22), some 25,000 dilapidated vehicles throughout the country were scrapped, a senior official at the Department of Environment said. "According to a report recently published by Khodronevis.com, a record number of old cars were scrapped in late summer to eliminate the mobile sources of air pollution caused by vehicles in metropolises," said Masoud Tajrishi, DOE's deputy for human environment. "Annually, over one million brand new vehicles are produced and imported into the country, aggravating traffic congestion and air quality in big cities. Eliminating five old vehicles for each imported car could do well to create a partial balance." Tajrishi noted that a number of polluting cars should be removed from roads for every vehicle consuming over 8.5 liters of fuel per kilometer.  DOE is to implement a more stringent scheme to monitor sources of air pollution in the capital over the second half of the current Iranian year (started Sept. 23) when temperature drops and air quality in metropolises begins to deteriorate.