Urban air pollution is a major health risk in several large Iranian cities. Transportation, extensive use of fossil fuels, outdated urban fleets of gasoline and diesel vehicles, industrial sources within and close to the city boundaries and natural dust are major contributing factors. Starting with Tehran, emission inventories and mathematical air pollution models are being developed. Air quality is being monitored and reported to the public, though data availability and validity remain a challenge. While national and local air pollution mitigation plans are in place, progress remains slow, coordination is weak, and sources of funding are limited.

Tehran, a city with 8.5 million inhabitants, has suffered from rapid and unplanned urbanization in recent years resulting in substantial environmental impacts perhaps fore-most of which is poor air quality. A major source of air pol-lution is emissions from mobile vehicles; therefore, having an accurate and comprehensive mobile source emission invento-ry is essential for decision-makers to develop mitigating strategies. The aim of this study is to determine the relative con-tributions of specific mobile sources to key air pollutants through the development of an emissions inventory for mobile sources in the city of Tehran using the International Vehicle Emissions (IVE) model. Tehran traffic data were acquired to obtain link level emission rates, using IVE emission rates. The developed emission inventory was evaluated using Tehran gasoline sales data. The results indicate that the sources of carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compound (VOC), nitrogen oxide (NO _x ), and sulfur oxide (SO _x ) emissions are mainly passenger cars. The contribution of emissions of CO, VOCs, and particulate matter (PM) from motorcycles to the total traffic emissions is more than 15, 31, and 12 %, respectively. Despite the fact that medium and heavy-duty vehicles (minibuses, buses, and trucks) only comprise 2.4 % of the Tehran fleet, they contribute more than 41, 64, and 85 % of the NO _x , SO _x , and PM emissions, respectively. Analyzing the distribution of the aggregated emission of pollutants shows that emissions are mostly higher in central zones due to the high traffic rate of passenger cars, taxis, motorcycles, and buses.

The spatiotemporal variability of ambient volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in Tehran, Iran, is not well understood. Here we present the design, methods, and results of the Tehran Study of Exposure Prediction for Environmental Health Research (Tehran SEPEHR) on ambient concentrations of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, p-xylene, m-xylene, o-xylene (BTEX), and total BTEX. To date, this is the largest study of its kind in a low- and middle-income country and one of the largest globally. We measured BTEX concentrations at five reference sites and 174 distributed sites identified by a cluster analytic method. Samples were taken over 25 consecutive 2-weeks at five reference sites (to be used for temporal adjustments) and over three 2-week campaigns in summer, winter, and spring at 174 distributed sites. The annual median (25th-75th percentile) for benzene, the most carcinogenic of the BTEX species, was 7.8 (6.3-9.9) μg/m3, and was higher than the national and European Union air quality standard of 5 μg/m3 at approximately 90% of the measured sites. The estimated annual mean concentrations of BTEX were spatially highly correlated for all pollutants (Spearman rank coefficient 0.81-0.98). In general, concentrations and spatial variability were highest during the summer months, most likely due to fuel evaporation in hot weather. The annual median of benzene and total BTEX across the 35 sites in the Tehran regulatory monitoring network (7.7 and 56.8 μg/m3, respectively) did a reasonable job of approximating the additional 144 city-wide sites (7.9 and 58.7 μg/m3, respectively). The annual median concentrations of benzene and total BTEX within 300 m of gas stations were 9.1 and 67.3 μg/m3, respectively, and were higher than sites outside this buffer. We further found that airport did not affect annual BTEX concentrations of sites within 1 km. Overall, the observed ambient concentrations of toxic VOCs are a public health concern in Tehran.