Visits to hospital emergency rooms in Tehran has doubled due to air pollution in the capital, causing shortness of breath, chest pain, headaches, and dizziness.

The head of Tehran province's emergency department confirmed an increase in public calls to the emergency department on cold and polluted days, saying that more than twenty-six thousand people with respiratory and heart problems have called Tehran Emergency in recent days.

The head of Tehran Emergency has explained that most calls in this regard are about five-year-old children and people over 55 years old with underlying health problems such as asthma.

The volume of calls is also higher in busy urban areas, Tehran's Grand Bazaar area, and the city center.

Air pollution in Iran is not limited to the capital, and many cities have been grappling with this problem for years.

The private and public vehicle fleets in Iran are mostly old and inefficient, producing air pollution. Gasoline in Iran is the second cheapest in the world and cities experience traffic jams with 20-30 year old cars, buses and trucks on the roads. Iran also uses diesel in power generation in large cities, which adds to air pollution.

According to Etemad newspaper in Tehran, there were only two clean days in the capital in 2022, and according to statistics from previous years, the number of clean days has been decreasing.

This newspaper predicted that in the not too distant future, having healthy air will be an impossible dream and at the same time emphasized that government agencies make no effort to enforce clean-air regulations.

As a result of persistent pollution, more than twenty thousand Iranians lose their lives each year.