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Quarantines around the world taken to contain the spread of the new coronavirus have caused air pollution rates to drop, especially in large cities that generally show gray skies.
A report published on Thursday (30) by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, an independent research institute, says that in Europe in the last 30 days, there has been a 40% reduction in the levels of nitrogen dioxide, one of the main pollutants in the air.
The report also says that the decrease in particulates, very fine pieces of solids or liquids present in the atmosphere that can be inhaled, was about 10%.
The reduction in the volume of pollutants would have prevented approximately 11,000 deaths due to poor air quality on the continent, according to the document. This drop would have been caused in large part by the reduction in traffic of vehicles powered by fossil fuels, such as gasoline.
However, recent studies with Covid-19 patients indicate that the drop in contamination may have come too late for many of those infected. Exposure to dirty air over long periods of time can cause or worsen respiratory diseases that make people more vulnerable to the new coronavirus.
In an article published in early April in the scientific journal Environmental Pollution, scientists analyzed data on air quality and case fatality from Covid-19 in northern Italy, one of the regions most affected by the virus in the European country, and one of the most polluted areas in the world. continent
The authors concluded that the high level of contamination there should also be considered a factor in the high lethality of Covid-19 in the region.
“Among older people living in the region, affected by other comorbidities, the defenses of the upper respiratory tract may have weakened with age and chronic exposure to air pollution. This can facilitate the invasion of the virus, reaching the lower respiratory tract, “say the researchers.
Another study published by researchers at Harvard University on April 24 crossed data on air quality and Covid-19 deaths in more than 3,000 counties in the United States. Counties are administrative subdivisions of the American states.
According to the researchers, a small addition of airborne particles, about 1 micrometer per cubic meter, led to an increase in Covid-19 mortality of 8%.
“The results suggest that living for a long time in areas with poor air quality increases vulnerability to the more serious consequences of Covid-19,” the scientists write in the article.
The data was published in a preprinted article, that is, without the review of other scientists. The results are in line with a similar survey by Cambridge University researchers with information from 120 areas in England, also published in a preprint on Tuesday (28).
According to the pulmonologist José Rodrigues Pereira, from the Hospital de la Beneficencia Portuguesa in São Paulo, environmental contamination causes inflammatory processes in the respiratory tract. “It works like passive smoking,” he says.
The inflammation caused by dirty air affects the bronchi and increases the tendency to develop an infection by bacteria or viruses like the one that causes Covid-19, explains the doctor. The concern is greatest from late April to early September in the southeast, when air humidity decreases and pollution stays in the air longer.
“Every time I receive more non-smoking patients in the office, who come for different reasons, but when we do the CT scan we find emphysema, and the only risk factor was that the person spent his entire life in São Paulo,” he says.
Pereira recalls that the results of the studies related to air pollution and Covid-19 should be read with caution. The areas with the lowest air quality are generally the most densely occupied economic and industrial centers. In these regions, transmission of the virus occurs more easily due to the proximity with which people live with each other.
