Shafaq News – Baghdad
On Monday, Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani ordered an expanded deployment of air-pollution response teams in Baghdad and other cities amid worsening environmental conditions.
According to a statement from his media office, Al-Sudani directed teams to enforce legal measures at landfill and waste sites and stressed the need for immediate steps to develop solutions to the growing environmental challenges.
The directives follow a series of severe pollution episodes that have repeatedly placed Baghdad among the world’s most polluted capitals. In August 2025, the city recorded the highest pollution levels among major global centers, and again last week topped international rankings as heavy smoke covered the capital.
Iraq’s air crisis, the statement explained, is driven by landfill sites, brick factories, oil-refining and metal-smelting facilities, power plants, private generators, vehicle emissions, fuel stations and large storage tanks, and widespread waste burning in several cities and provinces.
Meanwhile, new environmental statistics from Iraq’s Commission of Statistics and Geographic Information Systems (COSIT) show that only six of the country’s 18 provinces—Baghdad, Babil, Muthanna, Kirkuk, Najaf, and Basra—operate air-quality monitoring stations, leaving two-thirds of the country without any measurement infrastructure.
Across the 11 monitored sites, Kirkuk recorded Iraq’s highest concentrations of both ozone and sulfur dioxide.
Air pollution, health experts confirm, poses serious health risks for children, the elderly, and people with respiratory or cardiovascular conditions. Long-term exposure increases the likelihood of chronic lung disease, heart complications, strokes, and other severe outcomes.
One such episode occurred in October 2024, when Baghdad’s Air Quality Index reached a hazardous 297 during a sulfur-gas incident that hospitalized 200 people with breathing difficulties and allergic reactions.
Read more: Pollution gnaws at Iraq: Laws without teeth, fines without impact