CLEAN SKIES, CLEAR LUNGS

On 10 November, Texas was the first state in the United States to record one million coronavirus cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. According to research from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St Louis, pollution may bear part of the blame for the high rate of coronavirus in the US. When it comes to how fast the virus can spread through the community, the researchers say the health of the environment, specifically the presence of secondary inorganic components in PM2.5, that is directly correlated to the basic reproduction ratio of the virus. PM2.5 refers to ambient particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less; at that size, they can enter a person’s lungs and cause damage. “We checked for more than 40 confounding factors,” says Rajan Chakrabarty, associate professor in the US Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering. Of all of those factors, there was a strong, linear association between long-term PM2.5 exposure and the reproduction ratio of COVID-19. “Although decades of strict air quality regulations in the US have resulted in significant reductions of nitrogen dioxide levels, recent reversal of environmental regulations, which weaken limits on gaseous emissions from power plants and vehicles, threaten the country’s future airquality scenario,” says Chakrabarty.