Air pollution and health impacts during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Grenoble, France

Source apportionment of PM2.5 before and after COVID-19 lockdown in an urban-industrial area of the Lisbon metropolitan area, Portugal

“…This impact was higher compared to the national level, where there was an average reduction of 18% for PM 10 , considering 20 monitoring stations dispersed in mainland Portugal ( Gama et al, 2021 ), but it was comparable to the European level, where the largest average reductions in PM 10 , of about 40% in traffic stations and 30% in urban and suburban stations, were registered in Spain ( EEA, 2020 ). A large span in PM 2.5 reductions was observed worldwide, as for example, from metropolitan areas in Germany (5%) ( Balamurugan et al, 2022 ), Grenoble (22%) ( Aix et al, 2022 ), Lanzhou ( Chang et al, 2022 ) and North China Plain ( Li et al, 2021 ) (∼20%), to Shanghai ( Chen et al, 2020a ) and Chongqing ( Chen et al, 2020b ) (30–50%).…”

“…The restriction measures reduced mobility and minimised anthropogenic activities in an unprecedented way around the world, creating a unique opportunity for assessing the effect of anthropogenic activities on air pollutants ( Querol et al, 2021 ) and on the associated health risks ( Aix et al, 2022 ; Cai et al, 2022 ). Many studies have reported that air quality has improved significantly during the city lockdowns, due to a drastic reduction of primary pollutants ( Collivignarelli et al, 2020 ; He et al, 2020 ; Rodríguez-Urrego and Rodríguez-Urrego, 2020 ; Sharma et al, 2020 ), while increased secondary pollutant levels were reported ( Hong et al, 2021 ; Wang et al, 2021a ; Chang et al, 2020 ; Zheng et al, 2020 ; Chang et al, 2022 ; Ma et al, 2022 ) , underlying the need to understand more deeply the formation mechanisms of secondary PM 2.5 .…”

The Impact of the Covid-19 Lockdown on Birth Weight Among Singleton Term Births in Denmark

“…A pronounced increase in depression and anxiety were noted in pregnant women during the lockdown period (14,31). Conversely, a reduction in work-related stress, physical work strain, and harmful work- and environmental exposures (32), as well as the ability to rest more while in lockdown, could have had an opposite and positive effect on intrauterine growth and/or prolong gestation. Finally, lifestyle changes, including changes in dietary and exercise habits, resulting in greater gestational weight gain, could have increased term BW.…”

Air pollution and childhood asthma

“…The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to a worldwide lockdown in the year 2020, in order to mitigate the global spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). During that time period, there was a significant drop in air pollutant concentration and improved air quality measures [49,50] concurrent with a decrease in asthma-related healthcare utilization [51,52], allowing for a unique opportunity to understand the effects of asthma triggers leading to exacerbations. A study in Japan aimed to evaluate the differences between asthma exacerbations and driving factors prior to and during the COVID-19 lockdown.…”