As the coronavirus pandemic impacts millions across the world and brings economies to a grinding halt, there’s a lot of talk about how emissions from fossil fuel combustion have dropped radically in many countries. Yet this is no solution to air pollution and climate change. While eerily empty cities may be bathed in blue skies, millions are suddenly out of work wondering how they are going to care for their families.
The poor and most vulnerable will suffer most from both the health impacts and the economic crisis. Cleaner air for a few months may be a tiny silver lining to the COVID-19’s dark clouds, but it does little in the long run to solve the outdoor air pollution problem, that kills more than four million people every year. For that we need to kick our habit of burning coal, oil and gas.
One of the refrains all of us are hearing as the coronavirus spreads is to quit smoking. But what about the nine out of ten people in the world who are exposed to high levels of air pollution? They don’t have the choice to quit living where they live.
On every continent, people suffer the negative health impacts of air pollution. Living in Delhi is comparable to smoking six cigarettes a day. Respiratory systems of people in California and Australia have been compromised by air pollution from climate-fueled forest fires. The people of Wuhan have suffered poor air quality for years, and just last summer engaged in air pollution protests.
So, is air pollution making the pandemic worse? We know that particulate matter from air pollution increases the risks of pneumonia, particularly for older people. We know the more air pollution you are exposed to, the sicker you are likely to get. A 2003 study by researchers at UCLA’s School of Public Health found that during the SARS outbreak in China, patients with SARS were more than twice as likely to die from the disease if they came from areas of high pollution. A Harvard study has just found the first correlation between air pollution and COVID-19 deaths in the United States.
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High pollution levels might also increase the risk of contracting COVID-19 in the first place, as particulate matter has the potential to act as a carrier for contagion leading to rapid spread over larger areas. A paper published by the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine suggests that “the rapid increase of contagion rates that has affected some areas of Northern Italy could be tied to atmospheric particulate pollution acting as a carrier and booster there.”
The response to this pandemic threatens to make air pollution’s health impacts worse in the longer-term as well. Several governments are moving under the cover of COVID to give industry a break and weaken clean air standards. This is true in the United States, where the EPA is actually accelerating its radical relaxation of regulation as the pandemic proliferates. In South Africa air pollution standards have been significantly weakened during lockdown and this will, according to South Africa’s Life After Coal Coalition, cause an estimated 3,300 premature deaths. There will be particularly profound health impacts on children, the elderly, pregnant women, and those already suffering from asthma, heart, and lung disease.
Some elected officials are taking a different tack. For instance, in Bogota Colombia, facing a “triple threat” of poor air quality, seasonal respiratory illnesses and the pandemic, Mayor Claudia Lopez opened 76 kilometers of new bike lanes to reduce crowding on public transport and help prevent the spread of coronavirus while simultaneously improving air quality and people’s health.
As world leaders respond to the coronavirus, they have a chance to chart a different course and make a major intervention for a healthy planet and healthy people. With trillions of dollars in economic stimulus investments in the offing, they have a golden opportunity to channel significant portions of those funds to fast forward to a renewable energy economy. A transition to clean, renewable energy and transport will seriously reduce air pollution, climate emissions and the impacts of future pandemics.
The coronavirus pandemic has made it clearer than ever that human and planetary health are intimately interconnected. The choice is ours to act accordingly.
Read more on how the Skoll Foundation is responding to the COVID 19 crisis.
image by Kgbo – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
