Since late 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected millions of people worldwide and resulted in more than 200,000 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths. Emerging data suggest that elderly people as well as individuals with underlying health conditions are at a higher risk of hospitalization and death.1, 2, 3 Interestingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list of risk factors for severe COVID-19 (Fig 1) largely overlap with the list of diseases that are known to be worsened by chronic exposure to air pollution, including diabetes, heart diseases, and chronic airway diseases, such as asthma, lung cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.3 In this editorial, we highlight potential links between exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 severity, and we also hypothesize that disparate exposure to air pollution is one of the factors that contribute to the disproportionate impact COVID-19 is having on inner-city racial minorities.
Published May 7, 2020
Brandt, E. B., Beck, A. F., & Mersha, T. B. (2020). Air pollution, racial disparities and COVID-19 mortality. In The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology (Vol. 0, Issue 0). NLM (Medline). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2020.04.035