Stricter Air Quality Monitoring for Tehran

Tehran's office of the Department of Environment is to kick off a scheme on stricter monitoring of sources of pollution in the capital in the second half of the year to moderate the impacts of temperature inversion.  "Some 1,600 pollution hotspots have been determined across the city, which are mainly home to industrial units, hospitals and other polluting factories," Mohammad Hossein Bazgir, the head of the provincial DOE, said.  According to the official, if operated efficiently, the scheme to trace the major sources of pollution will be a great step toward ameliorating the capital's air quality during the cold season.  Every year, with the drop in temperature in winter, a phenomenon known as temperature inversion occurs during which cold air underpins warm air at higher altitude, leading to the entrapment of air pollutants in the city, which causes heavy smog.