Blog Action Day: Tehran Smog

Today is Blog Action Day, when thousands blogs have committed to posting about the environment; according to a Global Voices translation, 500 of these are Iranian blogs.

Hopefully some of them are writing first-hand accounts of Tehran smog, which, according to an AFP report from January, kills 3,600 a month. That’s 120 people dying every day from respiratory problems caused by smog. 120 a day! The city is surrounded by mountains, which trap smog on days that aren’t windy, and its 3 million cars are to blame for high amounts of carbon monoxide in the air.

The Iranian government has daily air quality updates online… any word from the inside on how accurate this is?

[Photo: amirsnaps]

Arash Shiva’s Iran Photos

Seattle-based designer/photographer Arash Shiva just sent a link to photos he took in Iran within the last month (see Iran one and Iran two on his site). I apologize because I cropped the one above to better fit this page; the original is here, on his photoblog Gentle Sea. The haze over the city makes it look like a very intricate drawing. My favorite of Shiva’s photos is the one below (also cropped, sorry!), of a little boy selling fruit - I love the expression on his face, and the odd position of his legs, and the fact that his hand is up his shirt. It reminds me of this photo by Diane Arbus.