It is observed that, the cities with higher air pollution witnessed comparatively more no of deaths of COVID-19 infected patients in the world. Kindly provide your valuable inputs regarding the relationship and its causative factors. Also, explore such other relationships wrt COVID-19 and environmental factors.
Air pollution is a factor that can make patients with corona-virus worse.
Please see the link below.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.05.20054502v1.full.pdf
“Patients with chronic lung and heart conditions caused or worsened by long-term exposure to air pollution are less able to fight off lung infections and more likely to die,” “This is likely also the case for COVID-19,”
Source: https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/air-pollution-likely-to-increase-mortality-from-covid19-experts/
Certainly, air pollution causes major lung problems, as well as corona virus that mainly affects the lung. From this it can be concluded that the more pollution increases somewhere, the less chance of survival for those with Covid 19.
Satish - since the novel COVID-19 virus is still in it's infancy, detailed analysis of this question will be subject to a longer term review of data once the pandemic has run its course. My general thought is there does appear to be a correlation between air pollution and the severity of the virus.
That said, i personally believe that air pollution exacerbates the body's response to most virus' and allergies. I grew up in a small town with low levels of pollution. Through my youth, i had very few allergies and very rarely got sick. I moved to a large metropolitan area to attend college and my seeming immunities to allergies and viruses appeared to be compromised. I developed seasonal allergies, and became subject to annual boughts with bronchitis. These trends have continued through my adult years. When i have lived in places with relatively clean air, i subsequently have had very few sick days. When i have lived in populated regions with poor air quality, my body shows the compromise and i once more am subject to stronger allergies and viruses.
I provide this information to suggest that if long term health studies were done with people such as me whom have lived through life in a variety of locations, both polluted and not, there would likely be a correlation between pollution and increased reaction to many viruses and immune responses. For instance, this can be seen in the increase in asthma in children, particularly in large metropolitan areas.
Therefore, i fully believe that data collected throughout this pandemic will show a correlation to higher noticeable infection rates and more intense cases in the regions with high pollution. The largest infection rates in the US are in New York City Metropolitan Area (including northern New Jersey), New Orleans, Detroit, and Chicago. All of these regions are nonattainment regions with the national ambient air quality standards for ozone (and possibly other pollutants).
I have not had time to delve into the data in any detail, so my comments are based soley on observation and not a deep dive into the statistics. Still I believe this question will show that the most severe outbreaks tie back into more polluted regions.
Please also take a look at this link.
https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0269749120320601?token=70FA14E736F9F25D49AF7709D7DBDE2729326F198105D698B6C7D8E82EEC84402E6E47C5F74A954B9073AFC52658B27D
The following might be helpful.
https://dailyasianage.com/news/225940/air-pollution-linked-to-higher-covid-19--death-rates
Air pollution can increase the spread of COVID-19 by creating conditions for inversion and accumulation of greenhouse gases, if it causes the accumulation of micro-droplets and also the lack of air movement.
Apparently, there is,, though not yet scientifically proven.. I was also thinking and asking myself why is it so rampant in industrialized nations and even in developing countries, epicenters are in urban cities with large industrial activities e.g. Nairobi and Mombasa. My unproven guess is the low levels of atmospheric oxygen concentration reduced by air pollutants. Lack of air movement/circulation does play a role given the timing of outbreak...winter..cooler season,,,when nose mucous is either low or secreted at high levels thus making the receptor organ vulnerable to easy adsorption,,,looking at this from the 'the Receptor Theory' in environmental health
Sir,
urban center having more air pollution, and smog, it leads to lung problems as well as respiratory problems as compare to rural area. The industrial development, more number vehicle and less control and less practices to reduce the air pollution.
as per my observation there is less number of plain death due to corona, died patients having other problems also...........but the air pollution can cause the working capacity of lungs.
Air pollution from petrol and diesel vehicles is likely to increase deaths from the emerging corona virus in cities, as public health experts asserted that "patients with chronic lung and heart diseases caused by prolonged exposure to air pollution are less". Ability to fight lung infections and more likely to die. "
Although there is currently no established correlation between the incidence of emerging corona virus and air pollution, one study of the SARS outbreak in 2003 showed that patients in areas with moderate levels of air pollution are 84% more likely to die Patients in areas with low pollution rates. The "Covid-19" pandemic is similar to the SARS virus and can cause respiratory failure in severe cases.
As an Environmentalist, it is YES! Because pollution is a dirty particles whereas virus will mixed-up within the air stream and thus, the long-term exposure you have been in outside or even in the built-environment, within air pollution increases the vulnerability that anybody can experiencing the most severe COVID-19 outcomes.
No any proven relationship yet. But droplets emit by mouth can remain at air around for few minutes depending on the size.
Air pollution is not only related with Covid-19 but also relation with future vector borne diseases
Compare particle sizes with virus size- https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/particle-sizes-d_934.html
Smallest combustion particles 0.01 microns, as is tobacco smoke. Coronavirus particles according to https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/coronavirus-pollution-masks-n95-surgical-mask/ average 0.125 microns. What can happen, is that the virus can hitchhike on a smoke particle, so travel farther than if encased in a droplet of coughed breath for example. In California, we are speculating that ocean salt spray can carry the particles to beach goers, for example, making the safe distance unknown.
As far as I know no. However, considering that polluted cities have high PM levels, the susceptibility of the Covid-19 virus to travel further when appended to PM is possible hence affecting a large population and leading to more deaths. This is a possible research avenue.
The low air quality might increase the rate of coronavirus infection. Air pollution in urban areas put people at greater risk from COVID-19 virus. People living in low air quality are more susceptible to the disease and the air borne particulate matter may help to spread the virus. The higher levels of these particles in air causing pollution may be associated with higher death rates from the disease. Hence, poor air quality can cause respiratory diseases, a condition that can be linked to deaths from the coronavirus pandemic.
It may be yes!! still many things we don't know about the epidemiology of the COV
From https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#total-cases --- some good news today!
People with pre-existing respiratory conditions due to the exposure of long term air pollution are having a high possibility to die from COVID-19. This could be related to the people live in major cities with high vehicular traffic (such as NY, London, Colombo) where there was high number of people are affected.
Perceived in another way, air pollution could possibly be playing a role in influencing rapid uptake and deposition on receptor surfaces [Nose mucus membrane/throat/lungs], presumably due to accelerated adsorption of the virus into the PM [particulate matter], which increases density of virus droplets, thus making their concentrated buoyancy in the lower layers of the biosphere.
My different concern is: whether the virus is undergoing some form of mutation due to variation of temperature and other weather elements, including levels of air pollution far from its epicenter-no wonder some patients in Africa have tested COVID-19 positive without prior symptoms,, only detectable once the patient present themselves in health care facility for treatment of other health conditions they have been living with throughout their life cycle.
And again, I am right to observe that COVID-19 exhibits recessive and dominance traits?
Nyangacha
Air pollution is a factor that can make patients with corona-virus worse.
I think that's possible. The emergence of pests and diseases is often caused by environmental damage and / or pollution. Reagrds
Hi sir,
As we are aware of this fact that COVID-19 infection is characterized by a high inflammatory burden, and it can cause viral pneumonia with additional extrapulmonary manifestations and complications including acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).In light of this matter, there are pieces of evidence that prove that people who have been living in places that are more polluted over time are more likely to die from coronavirus . In fact, a number of studies published in some of the peer-reviewed journals have claimed that long-term exposure to air pollution, more specifically- the Particulate matter, increases vulnerability to the most severe COVID-19 outcomes [1][2]. However, it should be noted that these findings on mortality have been more or less localized. Recent outbreaks of COVID-19 in highly polluted and populated cities have shown lower mortality rates. This indicates that the spread and fatality of the virus depend on a number of other factors including air quality such as population density, social habits, the age distribution of population, meteorological factors, etc [3]. Moreover, Many researchers have even reported that virus types such as MERS-Cov and SARS-Cov (others in the coronavirus family) find fertile “territory” in Particulate matter and, in a linear relationship, they survive longer and become more aggressive in an immune the system already aggravated by these harmful substances [4]. So, this topic of whether or not air pollution has any relation with COVID -19 needs to be validated by further future epidemiological studies in multiple geographic regions affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
[1] Wu, Xiao, et al. "Exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States." medRxiv (2020).
[2] Setti L, Passarini F, De Gennaro G, Di Gilio A, Palmisani J, Buono P, Fornari G, Perrone M, Pizzalunga A, Barbieri P, Rizzo E, Miani A. Position Paper .SIMA - Società Italiana di Medicina Ambientale; 2020. p. 1–5
[3] Contini, Daniele, and Francesca Costabile. "Does Air Pollution Influence COVID-19 Outbreaks?." (2020): 377.
[4] Martelletti, Luigi, and Paolo Martelletti. "Air pollution and the novel Covid-19 disease: a putative disease risk factor." SN Comprehensive Clinical Medicine (2020): 1-5.
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