Trends in ambient ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate matter concentrations over the Maltese Islands and the corresponding health impacts

Fenech, Sara; Aquilina, Noel J.

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134527

Cited by 30 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…These results coincide with previous findings which have demonstrated the negative influence of air pollution, and specifically emissions of/exposure to NO 2 , on chronic respiratory diseases ( Fenech and Aquilina, 2020 ; Lamichhane et al, 2018 ; Lyons et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

“…A specific study, in which “in vivo” and “in vitro” experiments were performed, demonstrated that continuous exposure to NO 2 triggers constant damage and a remodeling process in the epithelial cells of the lungs, which could lead to fibrosis or apoptosis, thus compromising the long-term functioning of the lungs ( Persinger et al, 2002 ). This condition increases people's vulnerabilty to chronic respiratory diseases ( Fenech and Aquilina, 2020 ; Garcia et al, 2019 ; Kopel and Brower, 2019 ; Ritz et al, 2019 ), and in the specific case of COVID-19 disease, could increase the mortality rate ( Gorbalenya et al, 2020 ; Lei et al, 2020 ; Leung, 2020 ; Nikpouraghdam et al, 2020 ). For example, the New York State Health Deparment currently considers COPD to be the 7 th highest comorbidity related to COVID-19 fatality (New York State Health Deparment, 2020).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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NO2 levels after the COVID-19 lockdown in Ecuador: A trade-off between environment and human health

et al. 2020

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The negative effects on human health, along with the fatalities caused by the new coronavirus, have led governments worldwide to take strict measures. However, a reduction in air pollution has been found in many regions on a global scale. This study is focused on how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting on the air quality in Ecuador, one of the most alarming cases of COVID-19 contagion in Latin America, occupying the first place as regards deaths per capita. The spatio-temporal variations in NO 2 concentrations in 12 highly populated cities were evaluated by comparing the NO 2 tropospheric concentrations before (2019) and after (2020) the COVID-19 lockdown. The atmospheric data was collected from the TROPOMI on the Sentinel-5P satellite of the European Space Agency. A reduction in NO 2 concentrations (−13%) was observed as a consequence of the COVID-19 lockdown in Ecuador. However, this reduction occurred to the greatest extent in the cases of Guayaquil (−23.4%) and Quito (−22.4%), the two most highly populated cities. Linking NO 2 levels to confirmed cases/deaths of COVID-19, a strong correlation between air NO 2 concentrations and the cases/mortality caused by coronavirus ( r = 0.91; p<0.001) was observed. This work highlights the crucial role played by air quality as regards human health.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

NO2 levels after the COVID-19 lockdown in Ecuador: A trade-off between environment and human health

et al. 2020

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“…We demonstrated that subway and Indoor MEs make a significant contribution to the exposure misclassification and therefore mortality change predictions. Azimi and Stephens [31] highlighted the importance of including indoor MEs when estimating the total exposure and the need for a better understanding of how the infiltration factors vary by building type in order to improve the exposure estimates and reduce the uncertainty. Based on field measurements, they found that exposure to PM 2.5 of outdoor origin inside the residence contributed around 67% to the total U.S. mortality burden.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They found that the attributable fraction of all-cause mortality associated with long-term PM 2.5 exposure ranged from 5.9% to 11.8%, indicating that PM 2.5 concentration is a major component of attributable deaths. Azimi and Stephens [31] used a modified version of the common exposure-response function and developed a framework for estimating the total U.S. mortality burden attributed to exposure to PM 2.5 of both indoor and outdoor origins. They found that residential exposure to outdoor-generated PM 2.5 accounted for 36% to 48% of total exposure, indicating that efforts to mitigate mortality associated with exposure to PM 2.5 should consider indoor pollution control as well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the Health Burden Misclassification from the Use of Different PM2.5 Exposure Tier Models: A Case Study of London

Kazakos

Luo

Ewart

2020

IJERPH

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Exposure to PM2.5 has been associated with increased mortality in urban areas. Hence, reducing the uncertainty in human exposure assessments is essential for more accurate health burden estimates. Here, we quantified the misclassification that occurred when using different exposure approaches to predict the mortality burden of a population using London as a case study. We developed a framework for quantifying the misclassification of the total mortality burden attributable to exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in four major microenvironments (MEs) (dwellings, aboveground transportation, London Underground (LU) and outdoors) in the Greater London Area (GLA), in 2017. We demonstrated that differences exist between five different exposure Tier-models with incrementally increasing complexity, moving from static to more dynamic approaches. BenMap-CE, the open source software developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was used as a tool to achieve spatial distribution of the ambient concentration by interpolating the monitoring data to the unmonitored areas and ultimately estimating the change in mortality on a fine resolution. Indoor exposure to PM2.5 is the largest contributor to total population exposure concentration, accounting for 83% of total predicted population exposure, followed by the London Underground, which contributes approximately 15%, despite the average time spent there by Londoners being only 0.4%. After incorporating housing stock and time-activity data, moving from static to most dynamic metric, Inner London showed the highest reduction in exposure concentration (i.e., approximately 37%) and as a result the largest change in mortality (i.e., health burden/mortality misclassification) was observed in central GLA. Overall, our findings showed that using outdoor concentration as a surrogate for total population exposure but ignoring different exposure concentration that occur indoors and time spent in transit, led to a misclassification of 1174–1541 mean predicted mortalities in GLA. We generally confirm that increasing the complexity and incorporating important microenvironments, such as the highly polluted LU, could significantly reduce the misclassification of health burden assessments.

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“…Due to combustion processes, road traffic is the main emission source of atmospheric PM2.5 (Nicolás et al, 2020). Other sources of PM2.5 in urban environments include Sahara dust events (Fenech and Aquilina, 2020;Nicolás et al, 2020), shipping (Viana et al, 2020), secondary inorganic aerosol or biomass burning (Liu et al, 2020), combustion processes in thermal power stations and other industrial sectors, the transport of anthropogenic aerosols from central Europe to Mediterranean areas, and certain agricultural activities (García et al, 2019). Spain, which still consumes a considerable amount of fossil fuels, is quite near to the Sahara Desert and has approximately 47 million inhabitants.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A city-level analysis of air pollution, climate and COVID-19 early spread during the Spanish lockdown

Briz‐Redón¹,

Belenguer-Sapiña

Serrano‐Aroca

2020

Preprint

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The COVID-19 outbreak has escalated into the worse pandemic of the present century. The rapid spread of the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has caused devastating health and economic crises all over the world, with Spain being one of the worst affected countries in terms of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths per inhabitant. In this situation, the Spanish Government declared the lockdown of the country with the aim of flattening the epidemic curve. The variations of air pollution in terms of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) levels in 8 cities of Spain are analyzed here considering the effect of meteorology during the COVID-19 lockdown period (from March 15th to April 12th 2020). The results of the analysis show that the 4-week Spanish lockdown was not long enough to reduce the PM2.5 levels in all the cities considered. These reductions were less than those expected, despite the drastically reduced human activity. Furthermore, no associations between COVID-19 accumulated cases and PM2.5 exposure or environmental conditions (temperature, precipitation, wind speed, sunlight hours, maximum pressure) were found during the early spread of the pandemic.

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Trends in ambient ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate matter concentrations over the Maltese Islands and the corresponding health impacts

Cited by 30 publications

References 29 publications

NO2 levels after the COVID-19 lockdown in Ecuador: A trade-off between environment and human health

NO2 levels after the COVID-19 lockdown in Ecuador: A trade-off between environment and human health

Quantifying the Health Burden Misclassification from the Use of Different PM2.5 Exposure Tier Models: A Case Study of London

A city-level analysis of air pollution, climate and COVID-19 early spread during the Spanish lockdown

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