Bombing
of Iran’s oil infrastructure to have major environmental fallout, experts warn
Monitors
admit they are struggling to keep track of the environmental disasters arising
from widening war
Damien
Gayle
Tue 10
Mar 2026 05.00 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/10/bombing-of-irans-oil-infrastructure-to-have-major-environmental-fallout-experts-warn
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.”
Tehranis
reported difficulty breathing on Sunday, as well as headaches and burning
sensations in their eyes and throats. But the acute effects of the black cloud
that spread across the city could just be the beginning, according to Prof
Andrea Sella, professor of inorganic chemistry at the University College
London.
“The
explosions will have exposed the local population to all manner of undesirable
and toxic chemical species, a problem that is well known to accompany warfare,”
he said, explaining that the crude oil will have contained a range of elements,
including metals, that would “also be spread indiscriminately”.
“There
will be a real cocktail of chemistry including significant amounts of aromatic
compounds that are known to interact with DNA and have been linked to cancers.
Whether or not this manifests will depend strongly on how long and serious the
exposure is of any individual.
“And on
top of this, once the containment provided by the tanks and pipes is destroyed
the material will flow everywhere leaving a mess of harmful material that
permeates the soil and coats everything else. There is the potential for
contamination of drinking water supplies.”
Despite
US efforts to distance itself from the attacks, there are growing fears the
attack might spark a tit-for-tat cycle of retaliation after a spokesperson for
the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps warned it could take “similar actions
[against oil infrastructure] in the region”.
On
Monday, Bahrain’s state-owned energy company Bapco Energies declared force
majeure on its operations after Iran attacked the country’s only oil refinery,
and Saudi Arabia reported intercepting four Iranian drones targeting its
Shaybah oil field.
Those
attacks followed drone strikes last week on the world’s largest natural gas
export plant in Qatar, the Saudi refinery at Ras Tanura, fuel storage hubs in
Oman and the United Arab Emirates, and multiple tankers in the Persian Gulf,
each of which posed a potential environmental catastrophe.
Doug
Weir, director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory, said that his
organisation’s efforts at tracking incidents of environmental harm caused by
the fighting around the Persian Gulf was becoming increasingly difficult.
“We are
now aware of hundreds of environmentally problematic incidents in Iran and the
region but the ongoing conflict, internet restrictions and delays in the
availability of satellite imagery mean that this figure is an understatement,”
Weir said.
“Piecing
together the war’s environmental footprint and its potential impacts on people
and ecosystems will be a huge task, and one that grows more complex with every
day that the war continues.”
“After
the first few days where military sites were targeted we are now seeing an
expansion into civilian and dual-use facilities, with this comes a broadening
of the range of environmental and public health risks associated with military
actions.”
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