Black Rain Falls In Teheran After Israel Hits Oil Facilities; Monitors Struggling To Track Toxins, Health Threats

[hatrack]

Israel’s bombing of Iran’s oil infrastructure will have major long-term environmental repercussions, experts have warned, as monitors admitted they were struggling to keep track of the environmental disasters arising from the widening war. Even as Iranians filled the streets to mark the appointment of a new supreme leader, the Shahran oil depot north-east of Tehran and the Shahr-e fuel depot to its south continued to burn on Monday, two days after they were bombed by Israeli warplanes.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Iran’s environmental agency and the Iranian Red Crescent Society had warned Tehran residents to stay at home, warning the toxic chemicals spread by airstrikes on five fossil fuel installations around the city could lead to acid rain and damage the skin and lungs. On Monday, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said: “Damage to petroleum facilities in Iran risks contaminating food, water and air – hazards that can have severe health impacts especially on children, older people, and people with pre-existing medical conditions.”

Iran’s deputy health minister, Ali Jafarian, told Al Jazeera that the soil and water supplies around Tehran were already beginning to be contaminated by the fallout from the weekend’s explosions. The black rain that fell across Tehran in the hours after the bombings was a mixture of soot and fine particulate matter from the explosions with rain from a storm that was already moving across the region, according to Dr Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the University of Reading.

“The airstrikes on oil depots released soot, smoke, oil particles, sulphur compounds, and likely heavy metals and inorganic materials from the buildings, whilst a low‑pressure weather system, which typically sweeps across Iran and west Asia around this time of year, created conditions favourable for rainfall,” Deoras said. “In terms of atmospheric chemistry, the oil fires produce sulphur and nitrogen compounds that could form acids if they dissolve in rainwater. “The risks to human health come from inhaling or touching the smoke and particles. Immediate impacts can include headaches, irritation of the eyes and skin, and difficulty breathing – particularly for people with asthma, lung disease, older adults, young children, and those with disabilities.”

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/10/bombing-of-irans-oil-infrastructure-to-have-major-environmental-fallout-experts-warn

[2naSalit]

1. K&R

[jfz9580m]

2. Suicidal madness

My mother had a soft spot for the state of Israel. It was partly a certain contrarianism evoked by the bullshit of a specific type of Indian left, if Indira Gandhi etc can be considered left. Arguably someone who enacted the emergency and was responsible for the massacre of many Sikhs is somewhat suspect as a leftist. But so much of human politics is more bloviation than rationality.

She didn’t like extremely mechanically predictable worldviews. Her own were fairly fluid to the extent that they were responsive to new information rather taking a rigid stance and ossifying. Outside of environmental issues, where the balance is tilted way too extremely against the earth.

And she liked Jewish writers like Herman Wouk and Leon Uris. Though we both agreed that “Exodus” was unreadable and that Ari Ben Canaan (an insufferable macho type) was very annoying.

But it seems as if Israel is on a suicidal path and its so called friends are not real friends but warmongering defense contractors and a species of sycophants dazzled by toughness and buying into grotesque stereotypes about Jewish power only wanting a cut of it.

An unequal society of bullies and sycophants on a suicide march. Speaking of bullying, I have to go bully Hennessy some more..everything is the fault of computers.