Current Air Pollution Linked to More Severe COVID-19 – By Jennifer Rainey Marquez (Futurity) / Oct 4 2020
Air pollution levels in the U.S. have not decreased significantly during the pandemic.
Contemporaneous exposure to air pollution may influence the severity of COVID-19 illness and increase the likelihood people will die from the disease, a new study shows.
Researchers examined daily air pollution data collected from Environmental Protection Agency monitoring stations across the United States as well as COVID-19 mortality and caseload data from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systemic Science and Engineering.
The study harnesses plausibly random changes in wind direction, which lead to large fluctuations in air pollution, to assess the relationship between air pollution exposure and COVID-19 caseload and mortality.
The researchers used cell phone data and state-level policies adopted to curb the spread of the virus to control for social distancing measures. The findings show that between January 22 and August 15, decreases in contemporaneous exposure to fine particle air pollution linked to decreases in confirmed COVID-19 cases and decreases in mortality.
Continue to article: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2020/10/current-air-pollution-linked-more-severe-covid-19/168971/
