Air Pollution: Sanctions’ Effect and Rival Hypotheses

Tehran is grappling with irritating air pollution for a couple of years and the challenge seems to be getting worse. However, what is the main reason for this? To answer the question, many studies have concentrated on the primary chemical ingredients, like CO; and others have focused on where such pollutants are produced, like factories. Nevertheless, we have selected a higher level of analysis by reviewing socio-economic hypotheses (including sanctions, population, and mismanagement) as well as global climate change from 1999 to 2023 while using descriptive and inferential statistics. We know that crude oil is one of the main exported products of Iran. Thus, to evaluate sanctions as the central hypothesis, we surveyed the rate of crude oil exports, and as an assumption, there is a negative relation between sanctions and such exportation. At this stage, we studied the relationship between sanctions and AQI (one of the best scales for calculating air pollution) and on the other hand, sanctions and main toxic gases. For rival hypotheses, we analyzed the relation between AQI and them (population, mismanagement, and global climate change). All in all, among them, the results demonstrate only the correlation of sanctions with CO (-.916), NO2 (.718), and SO2 (-.687). Meanwhile, it is assumed that by using some methods and applying standards, the government could manage the amount of CO and SO2, whereas, due to the need of Mazut to maintain the economy of energy, NO2 has increased.