About 15% Covid deaths linked to pollution: Study
Press Trust of India
About 15 per cent of deaths worldwide from Covid-19 may be linked to long-term exposure to air pollution, according to a study published on Tuesday.
Researchers, including those from Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Germany, found that in Europe the proportion of Covid-19 deaths linked to air pollution was about 19%, in North America it was 17%, and in East Asia about 27%.
The study, published in the journal Cardiovascular Research, is the first to estimate the proportion of deaths from the coronavirus that could be attributed to the exacerbating effects of air pollution for every country in the world.
The team noted that these proportions are an estimate of the fraction of Covid-19 deaths that could be avoided if the population were exposed to lower counterfactual air pollution levels without fossil fuel-related and other anthropogenic -caused by humans -- emissions.
This attributable fraction does not imply a direct cause-effect relationship between air pollution and Covid-19 mortality, the researchers said.
The researchers used epidemiological data from previous US and Chinese studies of air pollution and Covid-19 and the SARS outbreak in 2003, supported by data from Italy.
They combined this with satellite data showing global exposure to polluting fine particles known as ‘particulate matter’ that are less than or equal to 2.5 microns in diameter (known as PM2.5), information on atmospheric conditions and groundbased pollution monitoring networks.
The researchers created a model to calculate the fraction of coronavirus deaths that could be attributable to long-term exposure to PM2.5.
Estimates for individual countries show, for example, that air pollution contributed to 29 per cent of coronavirus 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,” said Professor Jos Lelieveld from Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.