The asymmetric nexus between air pollution and COVID-19: Evidence from a non-linear panel autoregressive distributed lag model

Abstract

The emergence of a new coronavirus (COVID-19) has become a major global concern that has damaged human health and disturbing environmental quality. Some researchers have identified a positive relationship between air pollution (fine particulate matter PM 2.5 ) and COVID-19. Nonetheless, no inclusive investigation has comprehensively examined this relationship for a tropical climate such as India. This study aims to address this knowledge gap by investigating the nexus between air pollution and COVID-19 in the ten most affected Indian states using daily observations from 9th March to September 20, 2020. The study has used the newly developed Hidden Panel Cointegration test and Nonlinear Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NPARDL) model for asymmetric analysis. Empirical results illustrate an asymmetric relationship between PM 2.5 and COVID-19 cases. More precisely, a 1% change in the positive shocks of PM 2.5 increases the COVID-19 cases by 0.439%. Besides, the estimates of individual states expose the heterogeneous effects of PM 2.5 on COVID-19. The asymmetric causality test of Hatemi-J's (2011) also suggests that the positive shocks on PM 2.5 Granger-cause positive shocks on COVID19 cases. Research findings indicate that air pollution is the root cause of this outbreak; thus, the government should recognize this channel and implement robust policy guidelines to control the spread of environmental pollution.

Impacts of exposure to air pollution, radon and climate drivers on the COVID-19 pandemic in Bucharest, Romania: A time series study

“…According to other studies ( Wen et al, 2022 ; Baron, 2021 , 2022 ; Baron, and Camilleri, 2021 ; Linillos-Pradillo et al, 2021 ; Sagawa et al, 2021 ; Facciola et al, 2021 ; Bourdrel et al, 2021 ; Iqbal et al, 2021 ), this paper may support the hypothesis that particulate matter, especially PM2.5 in cities can be considered as an environmental mutagen, involved in short to medium term mechanisms of induced intra-host mutagenesis in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, through diminishing pulmonary function. According to scientific studies, aerosolized respiratory viruses have a great potential for diffusion the viral infections, that ambient air pollutants could be a possible virus carrier ( Xu et al, 2022 ; Bu et al, 2021 ; Amin et al, 2020 ; Carraturo et al, 2020 ; Cevik et al, 2021 ; Borisova and Komisarenko, 2020 ).…”

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Sustainable impact of COVID-19 on education projects: aspects of naturalism

“…The world has precariously faced the disastrous outbreak of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) (Yang et al 2021a ; Iqbal et al 2021b ; Wen et al 2022 ). To date, more than 3.4 M people have suffered from the deadly virus in almost every country of the world and more than two hundred thousand lives have succumbed to the harsh brutality of COVID-19 (Razzaq et al 2020 ; Irfan et al 2022b , c ).…”