What Is War Good For? Clean Air, According to Middle East Conflict Study

According to a new study, devastating wars, civil unrest, humanitarian crisis and economic depression have significantly changed the pollutant levels in the air in the Middle East.

Researchers told The Guardian that since 2010, the levels of nitrogen oxide, a toxic gas that is used as a marker of air pollution, in major cities of Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Egypt have been decreased by 20-50%. Images from satellites also confirmed that the pollution levels, which had been increasing steadily since 1995, started to drop.

The study was published in the journal Science Advances and the researchers have linked the better air quality to political and social chaos that was brought by the so called Arab Spring.

The director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, Professor Jos Leliveld said: "We find that geopolitics and armed conflict in the Middle East have really drastically altered air pollution emissions. From 2005-10 the Middle East has been one of the regions with the fastest growing air pollution emissions. This also occurred in East Asia, but especially in the Middle East. This was related to economic growth in many countries. However, it's the only region in the world where this upward trend of pollution was interrupted around 2010 and then followed by very strong decline," The Guardian reported.

Air pollution, although it affects the entire globe, especially hits the developing nations hard. China and India, with their rapidly growing economy and high population are currently struggling with the problem, which is increasingly becoming a political issue. In China, experts suggest that more than 4,000 people die everyday due to complications attributed to air pollution such as lung, heart and circulation problems. For instance, it is said that breathing air in Beijing for a day is the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.