What is the relationship between the coronavirus crisis and air pollution in Tunisia?

Abstract

Since the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has generated horror and panic around the world. Nevertheless, this terrible crisis is having a positive side effect: it is lowering pollution levels. The outbreak of the coronavirus has caused many governments to impose measures to slow the spread of the virus within populations, such as limiting population displacement, requesting social distancing and the isolation of individuals at home, and reducing industrial activity. In this work, we investigated the effects of governmental measures taken to limit the spread of COVID-19 on the concentrations of air pollutants over four Tunisian cities (Tunis, Sousse, Sfax, and Tataouine). Data on the average daily levels of nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter during January, February, March, and April of 2020 were collected, treated, and analyzed for each city. Curves of average monthly pollutant concentrations from 1 January to 30 April for each city investigated showed that measures taken to reduce the spread of the virus had a substantial impact on emission levels: there were tremendous drops of 51% in NO2 and 52% in SO2 over Sfax City during March compared to those during January, while nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide levels dropped by about 38% and 42%, respectively, over Tunis City and by around 20% for Sousse. During the four months investigated, almost all of the pollutant concentrations showed a significant drop from mid-March. On 12 March, the Tunisian government imposed some individual and collective measures to protect the population from the virus, such as social distancing, limiting transportation, shutting down schools and universities, and reducing industrial activity. A general lockdown was brought in later. Thus, restricting human and industrial activities appeared to affect the air quality in Tunisia, leading to a marked improvement in the air quality index. Graphic abstract

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Air Quality: A Systematic Review

“…As shown in Table 1 , decreases between 9–60%, 21.4–61.6%, and 30–66% were obtained for PM 2 . 5 , PM 10 , and NO 2 respectively (pollutants that were consistently reduced).The studies that also used satellite data corroborated the results obtained with the ground-based levels [ 33 , 57 , 88 , 89 , 90 ], and those that included AQI claimed that it improved during the lockdown period [ 54 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 , 97 , 98 , 99 , 100 ]. Besides, the higher levels of reduction were mainly found for the new industrialised areas, e.g., India and China [ 101 ].…”

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: A syndemic perspective

“…There are also preliminary findings attributing a significant fraction of worldwide COVID-19 mortality to anthropogenic air pollution [ 57 ]. On the other, a strong reduction of air pollution was identified in many locations during the lockdown measures [ [119] , [120] , [121] , [122] ]. Studies measuring changes in air pollution and mortality have been related to a reduction in excess deaths due to air pollution (>4600 deaths in China, [ 119 ].…”

Temporal air quality (NO2, O3, and PM10) changes in urban and rural stations in Catalonia during COVID-19 lockdown: an association with human mobility and satellite data

“…Moreover, air quality assessment might be very useful to better understand the incidence of COVID-19, according to recent studies that report a positive relation between air pollution and SARS-CoV-2 severity (Domingo et al 2020 ; Marquès and Domingo 2022 ). Various studies that evaluate the effects of COVID-19 lockdown on air contamination have already been performed in different parts of the world (Delhi (Srivastava et al 2020 ): London (Kumari and Toshniwal 2020 ), Milan (Altuwayjiri et al 2020 ), Lima (Kumari and Toshniwal 2020 ), Ghaziabad (Lokhandwala and Gautam 2020 ), Nigeria (Zabbey et al 2020 ), Tunisia (Chekir and Ben Salem 2021 ), Baghdad (Hashim et al 2021 ), and Spain (Tobías et al 2020 ; Briz-Redón et al 2021 )). All these studies agree on the association between contingency measures and improvement in air quality, but also in clean beaches and environmental noise reduction (Zambrano-Monserrate et al 2020 ).…”