Smoke sweeping through the city. Black skies blocking out the morning sun. Black rain coating everything in sight with a toxic, opaque residue. These are the conditions Tehran residents have been waking up to since the United States and Israel’s war against Iran commenced earlier this month, and as the city’s oil depots have been bombed — causing massive black plumes of smoke to tower above them.
The World Health Organization recently stated that the black rain and “acidic rain” that resulted from these bombings were “a danger for the population.” The organization noted that people in the region could face respiratory issues, and that the conditions could threaten the lives of those with existing respiratory issues, like asthma.
“Such plumes can contain particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and toxic organic compounds — including PAHs and potentially dioxins — posing health risks to downwind communities,” added a March report from the Conflict and Environment Observatory.
An oil depot engulfed in flames also represents a threat to the environment, of course. The longer the war goes on, the more carbon emissions will be generated, and there’s currently no end in sight as the U.S. and Israel continue to bombard Iran. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated that war can lead to tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere.
Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, tells Rolling Stone that at this early point in the war, the concern is less the emissions and more the impact on public health.
“Based on analyses done after the Gulf War, when a large number of oil wells in Kuwait were set on fire, the impact on long-term global climate was probably not significant,” Oppenheimer says. “It will create, for some period of time, a regional air pollution problem.”
Oppenheimer says heavy particles, such as soot, will contaminate the area, but micro-particulates can travel long distances — hundreds of miles, potentially — and get into people’s lungs. The effects of the burning oil depots could also threaten water supplies and agriculture.
“In addition to the people harmed or killed directly by military actions, there are these indirect effects — oil getting into water supplies, seeping into the ground, and contaminating streams, rivers, and reservoirs,” Oppenheimer says. “They don’t have a lot of extra water in the Gulf region — it’s a very arid part of the world — so to the extent they do have surface water, those waters can become polluted.”
Iran was already facing a pretty severe water shortage before the war began, so water being affected could cause serious problems. The U.S. also struck a desalination plant in the region, which cut off water supply to 30 nearby villages. If attacks on desalination plants continue, the water supply crisis could be made even worse.
Pollution from the bombing of oil depots this past weekend appears to have already reached areas where food is being grown, and Oppenheimer says particles from the fires can produce toxins that end up in the soil, and that these toxins can be taken up by crops. Iran is also facing a food shortage.
“Those particles are damaging to human health at relatively low levels,” Oppenheimer says.
Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania, says he worries about the “immediate respiratory impacts” and the “long-term health consequences of the potentially carcinogenic toxic chemicals that the people of Iran are being exposed to.”
“To me, it’s almost a metaphor for what makes Donald Trump so dangerous,” Mann says. “He’s threatening our world in so many ways.”
The military vehicles in the region — from ships to jets — are also producing carbon emissions and pollution, which harm the environment and contribute to climate change. “As the war continues, military operations themselves will add to carbon dioxide emissions and other forms of pollution,” Oppenheimer says.
We tend to look at images of explosions and guns going off and think of the immediate deaths — like the at least 175 people, mostly children, who were killed in a strike on an elementary school for which the U.S. appears to be to blame — but there could very well be many more deaths that don’t happen right away. The environmental impact of the war, and the impact on food and water, could threaten the population in the region for years. Unfortunately, the parties responsible for the war aren’t likely to care.
“Every time we’ve seen this happen in a combat situation, it’s the same story all over again,” Oppenheimer says. “Governments seem to forget about it, and then they go and do it again.”
