Integrated Assessment of Air Pollution in Tehran, Over the Period from September 2008 to September 2009

BACKGROUND: Air pollution is a major problem in urban\industrial areas, like Tehran, and has several impacts on human health. This study aimed at assessing concentrations of criteria air pollutants (CO, SO(2), NO(2), O(3), PM(10)) in Tehran, extracting patterns of hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly variations of concentrations, and making comparisons to National Standards and WHO Guidelines. METHODS: Air quality data were taken from Air Quality Control Corporation and 5 sampling stations (out of 13) were selected for analysis according to data availability. Microsoft Excel 2003 was used for data analysis and plotting the charts. RESULTS: Patterns of temporal variation (hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly) of air pollutant concentrations were extracted. In some cases extracted patterns matched with the patterns proposed by other researchers. Pollutant concentrations were compared to National Standards and WHO Guidelines and it was observed that in most of the days, we exceeded the limit values. CONCLUSION: Air pollution in Tehran is quite high and there are many days that we exceed the standards; therefore appropriate control strategies are needed. Although the number of sampling stations is high enough to be representative of whole city, it is proposed that an independent sampling station is setup to check the validity of the measurements.