Throughout last Wednesday and Thursday, swift sand-carrying winds prompted officials to shut schools and government offices in at least six western provinces. With visibility reduced to as little as 50 meters in some areas, incoming flights and departures in the west were also canceled.
Nine times the allowable amount of dust particles floated in Lorestan, while air pollution in Khuzestan reached 70 times permitted levels.
According to the Kayhan daily, “Yellow sand rained in Khuzestan,” which borders Iraq, and 123 people were hospitalized in nearby Ilam province. The dust pollution went as far as Tehran.
State air pollution chief Amir Jamali announced Wednesday that in comparison to the same month last year, Iran was hit by three times as many sandstorms in Farvardin (March 21 to April 20). “The number of provinces affected by this problem this year has also increased three times compared to last year. Decline in rainfall and the dry farming year which we left behind have added to the problem,” Fars news agency quoted him as saying.
As what the daily Arman described as “small Arabian sands … marked a red situation across the country’s sky,” lawmakers from the impacted provinces have begun to criticize the government for insufficient action. In a letter to President Ahmadi-nejad on Wednesday, 23 Majlis deputies demanded the government “resolve the problems caused by the sandstorms in western and southern provinces,” reported Arman.
“Despite all efforts to resolve the issue, officials could not manage the crisis of sandstorms,” said Fakhreddin Heydari, a representative of Kurdistan province told the Majlis.
“I am sorry that the government’s negligence has made breathing difficult for people in the southern and western parts of the country,” he added.
Heydari was among those calling for increased cooperation between Iran and neighboring countries in dealing with these issues, pointing directly at the Iranian government and Foreign Ministry.
Many look to the dried-up areas of Iraq and Saudi Arabia as the reason for the severity of sandstorms this year. Iranian media have blamed Iraq in particular for a disappearing agriculture industry and for constructing dams that have changed the water supply causing desertification and deforestation. Major blame has previously been put on Saddam Hussein for draining Iraq’s marshlands where many dissidents opposed to his rule took refuge.
Furthermore, the Tehran Times said Iraq did not fulfill a 2009 agreement signed by Iran and Iraq that the latter would pour oil derivative mulch on deserts to help alleviate the problem of sandstorms.
Mohammad Shaeri, the deputy chief of the Iranian Environmental Protection Organization, said Iran and Iraq had recently signed an agreement under which Iran will provide a biological mulch to try to fix the sand.
“Iranian experts have devised a kind of biological mulch that will not damage the environment,” he said. Mulching will start on an experimental basis on a 200- to 300-hectare area of Iraq’s Anbar province west of Baghdad, which is thought to be the main source of the sandstorms. If that test proves successful, the mulching will be extended to other areas. He said.
Within two days the sandstorms affected the following provinces: West Azerbaijan, East Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Hama-dan, Qom, Markazi, Kerman-shah, Lorestan, Alborz, Qazvin, Tehran, Semnan, Ardebil, Gilan, Mazandaran, Esfahan, Khorasan Rezavi and Khorasan North.