The positive impact of the Omicron pandemic lockdown on air quality and human health in cities around Shanghai

Abstract

The Omicron pandemic broke out in Shanghai in March 2022, and some infected people spread to some cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region. To achieve the dynamic zero-COVID target as soon as possible, Shanghai and nine cities that were heavily affected by Shanghai implemented the lockdown measures. This paper aims to quantify the impact of the lockdown on air quality and human health. A difference-in-difference (DID) model was first used to measure the impact of the lockdown on air quality in these ten cities. Based on the results of the DID model, we estimated the PM 2.5 -related health and economic benefits using the concentration–response function and the value of statistical life method. Results showed that the lockdown has reduced the concentrations of PM 2.5 , PM 10 , SO 2 , NO 2 , and CO by 9.87 μg/m 3 , 17.31 μg/m 3 , 0.75 μg/m 3 , 9.03 μg/m 3 , and 0.07 mg/m 3 , respectively. The number of avoided premature deaths due to PM 2.5 reduction was estimated to be 35,342. The resulting economic benefits totaled 18.86 billion US dollars. We investigated the reasons for the air quality improvement in these ten cities and found the “3 + 11” policy has had a great impact on air quality. Compared with the first COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020, the effect of the lockdown in 2022 was smaller. These findings demonstrated that reductions in anthropogenic emissions would achieve substantial air quality improvement and health benefits. This paper re-emphasized continuous efforts to improve air quality are essential to protect public health.

Impact of the Covid-19 Lockdown on Air Pollution in an Industrial City in Northeastern China

“…Population migration data were collected from the Baidu Qianxi (https://qianxi.baidu.com/) and Auto-Navi migration datasets (https://trp.autonavi.com/migrate/page.do), which were obtained from the mapping apps of Baidu and AutoNavi that record personal realtime locations through mobile phones. These datasets were considered to accurately reflect population movements at the city level, which are correlated with air pollution levels (M. Wang et al, 2021b;Wang & Ge, 2023;. Therefore, the within-city migration (WM) index was employed to measure the intensity of epidemic-induced human mobility restrictions (M. Wang et al, 2021b).…”

“…In addition, a decline in the mass concentration of PM 2.5 led to an increase in solar radiation and, therefore, enhanced the photochemical production of O 3 (Sicard et al, 2020;Y. Wang et al, 2020d;Gao et al, 2023;Wang & Ge, 2023). Meanwhile, low PM 2.5 levels also reduce the loss of hydroperoxyl radicals, enhancing O 3 generation via the peroxy radical pathway (K. Li et al, 2019;Sicard et al, 2020).…”

“…Zheng et al, 2021;Cao et al, 2022;Cooper et al, 2022;Huang & Li, 2022;K. Li et al, 2022;Mamtimin et al, 2022;Bagherinia et al, 2023;Gao et al, 2023;Jia et al, 2023;Pushpawela et al, 2023;Ren et al, 2023;Sekar et al, 2023;Wang & Ge, 2023;Wong et al, 2023;J. Yang et al, 2023;.…”

“…Most studies report an improvement in air quality and a significant reduction in PM 2.5 , PM 10 , NO 2 , CO, and SO 2 during the lockdown compared to pre-lockdown periods and/or previous years, suggesting a significant correlation between anthropogenic activities and air pollution (Bao & Zhang, 2020;He et al, 2020;Huang & Li, 2022;K. Li et al, 2022;Mamtimin et al, 2022;Bagherinia et al, 2023;Gao et al, 2023;Jia et al, 2023;Pushpawela et al, 2023;Ren et al, 2023;Sekar et al, 2023;Wang & Ge, 2023;Wong et al, 2023;J. Yang et al, 2023;.…”

“…Wang et al, 2021b;Dong et al, 2022;K. Li et al, 2022;Gao et al, 2023;Guo et al, 2023;Jia et al, 2023;Ren et al, 2023;Wang & Ge, 2023). However, most of these studies have concentrated on changes in air pollutant concentrations at large spatial scales or in highly developed regions, such as the North China Plain, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta; few studies have been conducted in cities in Northeastern China (J.…”