Iran smog 'kills 3,600 in month'

[YankeyMCC]

(snip)
Air pollution is estimated to have killed nearly 10,000 people in Tehran over a one-year period, including 3,600 in a month, Iranian officials say.

Most of the deaths were caused by heart attacks and respiratory illnesses brought on by smog, they said.

The scale of the problem led one senior official to say living in the Iranian capital was like "collective suicide".
(snip)

(snip)
Cheap fuel encourages car use in Iran, correspondents say, and many vehicles do not meet global emissions standards.

"It is a very serious and lethal crisis, a collective suicide," the director of Tehran's clean air committee, Mohammad Hadi Heydarzadeh, told an Iranian newspaper.
(snip)


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6245463.stm

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Holy smoke -- nearly as bad as the London smog of '52 ...

http://www.portfolio.mvm.ed.ac.uk/studentwebs/session4/27/greatsmog52.htm