In line with efforts to renovate public transportation fleet in the last Iranian year (ended March 20, 2019), 4,000 vehicles have been phased out in Mashhad, the central city of Khorasan Razavi Province.
According to Touraj Hemmati, the head of the provincial office of the Department of Environment, a total of 4,300 smog-inducing buses and taxis were phased out of the metropolis last year.
"The move will definitely ease air pollution in the city," he told YJC.
Hemmati called on the authorities to accelerate the supply of new vehicles to give Mashhad’s public transportation system a fresh lease of life.
About 2,000 buses and 13,000 taxis are active in Mashhad's public transportation fleet.
Mashhad, like many booming metropolises in the world, is struggling with the worsening problem of air pollution.
Based on the latest air quality report published by the provincial DOE on the website Epmc.mashhad.ir, during the year ending in March 2018, people in Mashhad breathed clean air for only 18 days when the Air Quality Index was in “good” condition.
AQI classifies conditions according to a measure of polluting matters: good (0-50), moderate (51-100), unhealthy for sensitive groups (101-150), unhealthy (151-200), very unhealthy (201-300) and hazardous (301-500).
The report shows 264 days in the yearlong period passed with AQI having a “moderate” status.
Sensitive groups in the city were urged to limit their outdoor activities for 78 days, as the index entered the threshold of 101-150.
Children, the elderly, pregnant women and those with respiratory and cardiovascular conditions fall in the “unhealthy for sensitive groups”.
Skies were fully blanketed by toxic pollutants in the metropolis, with the index showing "unhealthy" status for all groups for five days.
Pollutants measured to determine air quality include carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ground-level ozone and particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10). AQI figures are calculated as per concentration of pollutants.
The analysis of data indicates that the pollutants responsible for poor air quality in Mashhad were PM 2.5, nitrogen dioxide and PM 10.
