Air Pollution Linked With 15% Coronavirus Deaths Worldwide: Study
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Air Pollution Linked With 15% Coronavirus Deaths Worldwide: Study

The study has revealed that in Europe, the proportion of COVID-19 deaths linked to air pollution stands at about 19 per cent, it was 17 per cent in North America, and about 27 per cent in East Asia.

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Nearly 15 per cent of fatalities across the world due to novel coronavirus may be linked to long-term exposure to air pollution, according to a study published by researchers, including those from Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Germany on October 27.

The study has revealed that in Europe, the proportion of COVID-19 deaths linked to air pollution stands at about 19 per cent, it was 17 per cent in North America, and about 27 per cent in East Asia.

The study, published in the journal Cardiovascular Research, is the first to estimate the proportion of deaths from the coronavirus that could be linked to the effects of air pollution for every country in the world.

The study also noted that these proportions are an estimate of the fraction of COVID-19 deaths that could be prevented if the population were exposed to lower counterfactual air pollution levels without fossil fuel-related and other anthropogenic, caused by humans and emissions.

"This attributable fraction does not imply a direct cause-effect relationship between air pollution and COVID-19 mortality," the researchers said. Instead, it refers to relationships between two, direct and indirect, i.e. by aggravating co-morbidities, or other health conditions, that could lead to deadly health outcomes of the virus infection, they added.

The researchers used epidemiological data from the old US and Chinese studies of air pollution and COVID-19 and the SARS outbreak in 2003, supported by additional data from Italy.

All the data was combined this with satellite data to show global exposure to polluting fine particles known as 'particulate matter' that is less than or equal to 2.5 microns in diameter (known as PM2.5), information on atmospheric conditions and ground-based pollution monitoring networks.

The researchers created a model to calculate the fraction of coronavirus deaths that could be linked to long-term exposure to PM2.5. The results are based on epidemiological data collected up to the third week in June 2020.

Estimates show that air pollution contributed to 29 per cent of COVID-19 deaths in the Czech Republic, 27 per cent in China, 26 per cent in Germany, 22 per cent in Switzerland, and 21 per cent in Belgium.

"Since the numbers of deaths from COVID-19 are increasing all the time, it's not possible to give exact or final numbers of COVID-19 deaths per country that can be attributed to air pollution," Professor Jos Lelieveld from Max Planck Institute for Chemistry said

"However, as an example, in the UK there have been over 44,000 coronavirus deaths and we estimate that the fraction attributable to air pollution is 14 per cent, meaning that more than 6,100 deaths could be attributed to air pollution," Lelieveld said.

"In the US, more than 220,000 COVID deaths with a fraction of 18 per cent yields about 40,000 deaths attributable to air pollution," he added.

Professor Thomas Munzel from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany noted that when people inhale polluted air, the very small polluting particles, the PM2.5, move from the lungs to the blood and blood vessels, leading to inflammation and serious oxidative stress, which is an imbalance between free radicals and oxidants in the body that normally repair damage to cells.

"This causes damage to the inner lining of arteries, the endothelium, and leads to the narrowing and stiffening of the arteries. The COVID-19 virus also enters the body via the lungs, causing similar damage to blood vessels, and it is now considered to be an endothelial disease," Munzel said.

"If both long-term exposure to air pollution and infection with the COVID-19 virus come together then we have an additive adverse effect on health, particularly with respect to the heart and blood vessels, which leads to greater vulnerability and less resilience to COVID-19," he added.

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