Changes in Air Quality during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Associated Health Benefits in Korea

The COVID-19 pandemic was caused by a highly contagious coronavirus that has triggered worldwide control actions such as social distancing and lockdowns. COVID-19 control actions have resulted in improved air quality locally and around the world in the short-term by limiting human activity. We analyzed the impacts of social distancing and transboundary pollutants on air quality changes using open data and examined the corresponding health benefits focusing on two domestic cities (Seoul and Daegu) in Korea where the spread of coronavirus was severe. During the COVID-19 pandemic, PM2.5, PM10, and NO2 concentrations decreased significantly by 31%, 61%, and 33%, respectively, compared to the previous three years. In particular, the PM2.5/PM10 ratio fell 24.5% after the implementation of social distancing, suggesting a decrease in anthropogenic emissions. Moreover, we found that the air quality index (AQI) also improved significantly, with a focus on reducing exposure to sensitive groups. In Seoul and Daegu, improved air quality prevented 250 and 78 premature deaths, and health costs were USD 884 million and USD 278 million, respectively. On the other hand, health loss due to COVID-19 deaths was in sharp contrast to USD 7.1 million and USD 543.6 million. Our findings indicate a significant association between COVID-19 prevalence patterns and health outcomes.

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90 Days of COVID-19 Social Distancing and Its Impacts on Air Quality and Health in Sao Paulo, Brazil

10.20944/preprints202008.0022.v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Daniela Debone ◽

Mariana da Costa ◽

Simone Miraglia

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Quality Improvement ◽

Air Quality ◽

Sao Paulo ◽

São Paulo ◽

Social Distancing ◽

Premature Deaths ◽

Health Loss ◽

Air Quality Improvement ◽

Concentration Levels

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic caused by spreading rapidly a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has imposed a unique situation for the humanity. Sao Paulo has reported 124,105 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 5,623 deaths up to June 14th, being considered the epicenter of the pandemic in Brazil and in South America. Due to the measures for social distancing, there was a drop in the air pollution concentration in Sao Paulo. Starting on March 16th, 2020, we broke 90 days of social distancing into 13 weeks and compared to an equivalent period in 2019. We investigated the air quality improvement during the quarantine period and compared the associated avoided deaths to COVID-19 burden deaths. Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) was the best indicator of air quality in the analyzed weeks, since its reduction reached 58 %. Our study showed that the 5,623 deaths occurred during the analyzed weeks of quarantine represents an economic health loss of US$ 10.5 billion. In opposite, we observed a significant air quality improvement due to pollutants concentrations’ reductions during the analyzed weeks. Considering PM10, PM2.5 and NO2, the decrease of concentration levels respectively avoided 78, 337 and 387 premature deaths and prevented up to US$ 1.5 billion on health costs. These results highlight the importance of continuing to enforce existing air pollution regulations and measures to protect human health both during and after COVID-19 pandemic.

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Quantifying the Health Benefits of Urban Climate Mitigation Actions: Current State of the Epidemiological Evidence and Application in Health Impact Assessments

Frontiers in Sustainable Cities ◽

10.3389/frsc.2021.768227 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

Author(s):

Maria D. Castillo ◽

Susan C. Anenberg ◽

Zoe A. Chafe ◽

Rachel Huxley ◽

Lauren S. Johnson ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Quality ◽

Air Pollutants ◽

Health Benefits ◽

Health Impact ◽

Epidemiological Studies ◽

Health Improvement ◽

Current State ◽

The World ◽

Climate Action ◽

Health Impact Assessments

While ambitious carbon reduction policies are needed to avoid dangerous levels of climate change, the costs of these policies can be balanced by wide ranging health benefits for local communities. Cities, responsible for ~70% of the world's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and home to a growing majority of the world's population, offer enormous opportunities for both climate action and health improvement. We aim to review the current state of knowledge on key pathways leading from carbon mitigation to human health benefits, and to evaluate our current ability to quantify health benefits for cities around the world. For example, because GHGs and air pollutants are both released during fuel combustion, reducing fuel burning can reduce both GHGs and air pollutants, leading to direct health benefits. Air quality improvements may be particularly important for city-scale climate action planning because the benefits occur locally and relatively immediately, compared with the global and long-term (typically, decades to centuries) benefits for the climate system. In addition to improved air quality, actions that promote active transport in cities via improved cycling and pedestrian infrastructure can reap large cardiovascular health benefits via increased physical activity. Exposure to green space has been associated with beneficial health outcomes in a growing number of epidemiological studies and meta-analyses conducted around the world. Finally, noise is an underappreciated environmental risk factor in cities which can be addressed through actions to reduce motor vehicle traffic and other noise sources. All of these environmental health pathways are supported by well-conducted epidemiological studies in multiple locales, providing quantitative exposure–response data that can be used as inputs to health impact assessments (HIAs). However, most epidemiologic evidence derives from studies in high-income countries. It is unclear to what extent such evidence is directly transferable for policies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This gap calls for a future focus on building the evidence based in LMIC cities. Finally, the literature suggests that policies are likely to be most effective when they are developed by multidisciplinary teams that include policy makers, researchers, and representatives from affected communities.

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Air quality and health benefits of China’s current and upcoming clean air policies

Faraday Discussions ◽

10.1039/d0fd00090f ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jing Cheng ◽

Dan Tong ◽

Yang Liu ◽

Yu Bo ◽

Bo Zheng ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Quality ◽

Health Benefits ◽

Premature Deaths ◽

Majority Population ◽

Clean Air

We estimated China's clean air policies could ensure majority population lives below 35μg m−3, avoiding ∼95.0 thousand premature deaths in 2030.

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ESTIMATING HEALTH CO-BENEFITS OF CLIMATE POLICIES IN CHINA: AN APPLICATION OF THE REGIONAL EMISSIONS-AIR QUALITY-CLIMATE-HEALTH (REACH) FRAMEWORK

Climate Change Economics ◽

10.1142/s2010007820410043 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (03) ◽

pp. 2041004

Author(s):

CHENFEI QU ◽

XI YANG ◽

DA ZHANG ◽

XILIANG ZHANG

Keyword(s):

Air Quality ◽

Health Benefits ◽

Assessment Model ◽

Modeling Framework ◽

Mortality And Morbidity ◽

Statistical Life ◽

Premature Deaths ◽

Climate Policies ◽

Regional Emissions ◽

The Impact

Climate policies can bring local air quality and health co-benefits, which may partially or entirely offset the costs of implementing these policies. In this study, we introduce an integrated health co-benefits assessment model, the Regional Emissions-Air quality-Climate-Health (REACH) Modeling Framework, which is capable of evaluating the impact of policies on air pollution-related mortality and morbidity in the whole economic system overtime at the provincial level for China. We first provide a detailed description of the modeling framework and conduct a case study to estimate the health benefits of different climate policy scenarios. We show that a scenario consistent with the 2∘C target that peaks China’s emissions before 2025 could avoid around 190 thousand premature deaths in 2030. The health benefits could partially or fully cover the policy costs under different assumptions of the value of a statistical life (VSL). Our framework also illustrates that estimated costs and health benefits distribute unevenly across regions in China.

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How many could have been saved? Effects of social distancing on COVID-19

Revista de Administração Pública ◽

10.1590/0034-761220200530 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 55 (1) ◽

pp. 12-26 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Matheus Cunha ◽

Amanda Domingos ◽

Virginia Rocha ◽

Marcus Torres

Keyword(s):

Causal Effect ◽

Cumulative Effects ◽

Causal Effects ◽

Main Argument ◽

Short Term ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Social Distancing ◽

The Third ◽

The World ◽

Available Information

Abstract What is the effect of social distancing policies on the spread of the new coronavirus? Social distancing policies rose to prominence as most capable of containing contagion and saving lives. Our purpose in this paper is to identify the causal effect of social distancing policies on the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and on contagion velocity. We align our main argument with the existing scientific consensus: social distancing policies negatively affect the number of cases. To test this hypothesis, we construct a dataset with daily information on 78 affected countries in the world. We compute several relevant measures from publicly available information on the number of cases and deaths to estimate causal effects for short-term and cumulative effects of social distancing policies. We use a time-series cross-sectional matching approach to match countries’ observable histories. Causal effects (ATTs and ATEs) can be extracted via a dif-in-dif estimator. Results show that social distancing policies reduce the aggregated number of cases by 4,832 on average (or 17.5/100 thousand), but only when strict measures are adopted. This effect seems to manifest from the third week onwards.

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Quantifying COVID-19’s Silver Lining: Avoided Deaths from Air Quality Improvements in Bogotá

10.18235/0003787 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Allen Blackman ◽

Jorge Bonilla ◽

Laura Villalobos

Keyword(s):

Air Quality ◽

First Year ◽

Quality Improvements ◽

Short Term ◽

Particulate Pollution ◽

Premature Deaths ◽

Fine Particulate ◽

Short Term Mortality ◽

Silver Lining

In cities around the world, Covid-19 lockdowns have improved outdoor air quality, in some cases dramatically. Even if only temporary, these improvements could have longer-lasting effects on policy by making chronic air pollution more salient and boosting political pressure for change. To that end, it is important to develop objective estimates of both the air quality improvements associated with Covid-19 lockdowns and the benefits these improvements generate. We use panel data econometric models to estimate the effect of Bogotás lockdown on fine particulate pollution, epidemiological models to simulate the effect of reductions in that pollution on long-term and short-term mortality, and benefit transfer methods to estimate the monetary value of the avoided mortality. We find that in its first year of implementation, on average, Bogotás lockdown cut fine particulate pollution by more than one-fifth. However, the magnitude of that effect varied considerably over the course of the year and across the citys neighborhoods. Equivalent permanent reductions in fine particulate pollution would reduce long-term premature deaths by more than one-quarter each year, a benefit valued at $670 million per year. Finally, we estimate that in 2020-2021, the lockdown reduced short-term deaths by 31 percent, a benefit valued at $180 million.

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Air Quality Toxicity Index (AQTI): Quantifying Air Pollution Impact on Disease Onset

European Journal of Medical and Health Sciences ◽

10.24018/ejmed.2020.2.1.143 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Harold I Zeliger

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Air Quality ◽

Respiratory Diseases ◽

Disease Onset ◽

Toxicity Index ◽

Premature Deaths ◽

The World ◽

Air Pollution Impacts ◽

Pollution Impacts

Air pollution impacts 90% of the world's population and is the number one cause of premature deaths worldwide, etiamted at 8-10 million pre year. Breathing polluted air is associated with the accelerated onset of numerous illnesses, including respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, several cancers and Alzheimer's disease. Fice major pollutants are typically monitored in cities around the world for air quality. These include ozone, particulate matter, dulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide. The Air Quality Toxicity Index (AQTI), that is first reported here, provides a quantitative indicator with which to monitor air quality, make air quality comparisons of different locations and compare air quality of the same locations as a function of time.

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Air Quality And Health Benefits of Increasing Carbon Mitigation Tech-Innovation In China

10.21203/rs.3.rs-800136/v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Shunlin Jin ◽

Weidong Wang ◽

Dragana Ostic ◽

Caijing Zhang ◽

Na Lu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Quality ◽

Industrial Structure ◽

Health Benefits ◽

Low Carbon ◽

Carbon Mitigation ◽

Short Term ◽

Stirpat Model ◽

Haze Pollution ◽

Patent Applications

Abstract Most studies on the short-term local benefits of carbon mitigation technologies on air quality improvement and health focus on specific technologies such as biofuels or Carbon sequestration technologies, while ignoring the overall role of the growing scale of low-carbon technologies, and the relevant empirical studies are particularly lacking. Based on STIRPAT model and EKC hypothesis, this paper takes 30 provinces of China from 2004 to 2016 as research samples, measures the carbon mitigation tech-innovation(CMTI) with Y02 low carbon patent applications, and constructs a econometric model to empirically analyze the effect of carbon mitigation tech-innovation in response to climate change on the inhibition of haze pollution. It draws on relevant studies to quantify air quality and health benefits of carbon mitigation tech-innovation. Research shows that a 1% increase in the number of low-carbon patent applications can reduce haze pollution by 0.066%. According to this estimate, to 2029,China's carbon mitigation tech-innovation could reduce PM2.5 concentration to 15µg/m3 preventing 5.597million premature deaths. The research further found that carbon mitigation tech-innovation can also indirectly inhibit haze pollution by triggering more systematic economic structure changes such as energy and industrial structure. Additionally, the study found that the role of grey tech-innovation(GT) related to improving the efficiency of fossil energy is stronger than that of clean technology(CT) related to the use of renewable energy. This suggests that for a large economy such as China, where coal is still the dominant source of energy consumption, the short-term local benefits of improving air quality and health through the use of grey tech-innovation to improve energy and industrial structure are still important to balance the cost of carbon mitigation.

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Features Exploration from Datasets Vision in Air Quality Prediction Domain

Atmosphere ◽

10.3390/atmos12030312 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (3) ◽

pp. 312

Author(s):

Ditsuhi Iskandaryan ◽

Francisco Ramos ◽

Sergio Trilles

Keyword(s):

Air Quality ◽

Spatial Data ◽

Research Work ◽

Open Data ◽

World Population ◽

Quality Prediction ◽

Temporal Data ◽

Air Quality Prediction ◽

The World ◽

Monitoring And Forecasting

Air pollution and its consequences are negatively impacting on the world population and the environment, which converts the monitoring and forecasting air quality techniques as essential tools to combat this problem. To predict air quality with maximum accuracy, along with the implemented models and the quantity of the data, it is crucial also to consider the dataset types. This study selected a set of research works in the field of air quality prediction and is concentrated on the exploration of the datasets utilised in them. The most significant findings of this research work are: (1) meteorological datasets were used in 94.6% of the papers leaving behind the rest of the datasets with a big difference, which is complemented with others, such as temporal data, spatial data, and so on; (2) the usage of various datasets combinations has been commenced since 2009; and (3) the utilisation of open data have been started since 2012, 32.3% of the studies used open data, and 63.4% of the studies did not provide the data.

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Impact of climate and land cover changes on tropospheric ozone air quality and public health in East Asia between 1980 and 2010

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ◽

10.5194/acp-15-10093-2015 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 15 (17) ◽

pp. 10093-10106 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

Y. Fu ◽

A. P. K. Tai

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Climate Change ◽

Air Quality ◽

Land Cover ◽

East Asia ◽

Land Cover Change ◽

Surface Ozone ◽

Anthropogenic Emissions ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Premature Deaths

Abstract. Understanding how historical climate and land cover changes have affected tropospheric ozone in East Asia would help constrain the large uncertainties associated with future East Asian air quality projections. We perform a series of simulations using a global chemical transport model driven by assimilated meteorological data and a suite of land cover and land use data to examine the public health effects associated with changes in climate, land cover, land use, and anthropogenic emissions between the 5-year periods 1981–1985 and 2007–2011 in East Asia. We find that between these two periods land cover change alone could lead to a decrease in summertime surface ozone by up to 4 ppbv in East Asia and ~ 2000 fewer ozone-related premature deaths per year, driven mostly by enhanced dry deposition resulting from climate- and CO2-induced increase in vegetation density, which more than offsets the effect of reduced isoprene emission arising from cropland expansion. Climate change alone could lead to an increase in summertime ozone by 2–10 ppbv in most regions of East Asia and ~ 6000 more premature deaths annually, mostly attributable to warming. The combined impacts (−2 to +12 ppbv) show that while the effect of climate change is more pronounced, land cover change could offset part of the climate effect and lead to a previously unknown public health benefit. While the changes in anthropogenic emissions remain the largest contributor to deteriorating ozone air quality in East Asia over the past 30 years, we show that climate change and land cover changes could lead to a substantial modification of ozone levels, and thus should come into consideration when formulating future air quality management strategies. We also show that the sensitivity of surface ozone to land cover change is more dependent on dry deposition than on isoprene emission in most of East Asia, leading to ozone responses that are quite distinct from that in North America, where most ozone-vegetation sensitivity studies to date have been conducted.

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