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[School] Buses/Vehicle Use around schools | Air Pollution and Academic Achievement | Air Pollution and Children's Health | Air Pollution and COVID-19 | Air Pollution/Climate Change and Health | Air Pollution/Climate Change and Mental Health | Indoor Air Pollution | Systemic Environmental Racism | Vehicles/Traffic
Fine particulate air pollution is harmful to children in myriad ways. While evidence ismounting that chronic exposures are associated with reduced academic proficiency, no research hasexamined the frequency of peak exposures. It is also unknown if pollution exposures influenceacademic proficiency to the same degree in all schools or if the level of children’s social disadvantagein schools modifies the effects, such that some schools’ academic proficiency levels are more sensitiveto exposures. We address these gaps by examining the percentage of third grade students who testedbelow the grade level in math and English language arts (ELA) in Salt Lake County, Utah primaryschools (n=156), where fine particulate pollution is a serious health threat. More frequent peakexposures were associated with reduced math and ELA proficiency, as was greater school disadvantage.High frequency peak exposures were more strongly linked to lower math proficiency in moreadvantaged schools. Findings highlight the need for policies to reduce the number of days with peakair pollution.
Published Sep 22, 2020
Mullen, Casey, et al. “Effects of PM2.5 on Third Grade Students’ Proficiency in Math and English Language Arts.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 17, no. 18, 2020, p. 6931., doi:10.3390/ijerph17186931.
The novel human coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has claimed more than 600,000 lives worldwide, causing tremendous public health, social, and economic damages. Although the risk factors of COVID-19 are still under investigation, environmental factors, such as urban air pollution, may play an important role in increasing population susceptibility to COVID-19 pathogenesis.
From January 22, 2020, to July 17, 2020, 3,659,828 COVID-19 cases and 138,552 deaths were reported in 3,076 US counties, with an overall observed case-fatality rate of 3.8%. County-level average NO2 concentrations were positively associated with both COVID-19 case-fatality rate and mortality rate in single-, bi-, and tri-pollutant models. When adjusted for co-pollutants, per interquartile-range (IQR) increase in NO2 (4.6 ppb), COVID-19 case-fatality rate and mortality rate were associated with an increase of 11.3% (95% CI 4.9%–18.2%) and 16.2% (95% CI 8.7%–24.0%), respectively. We did not observe significant associations between COVID-19 case-fatality rate and long-term exposure to PM2.5 or O3, although per IQR increase in PM2.5 (2.6 μg/m3) was marginally associated, with a 14.9% (95% CI 0.0%–31.9%) increase in COVID-19 mortality rate when adjusted for co-pollutants.
Published Sep 21, 2020
Liang, D., Shi, L., Zhao, J., Liu, P., Sarnat, J. A., Gao, S., Schwartz, J., Liu, Y., Ebelt, S. T., Scovronick, N., & Chang, H. H. (2020). Urban Air Pollution May Enhance COVID-19 Case-Fatality and Mortality Rates in the United States. The Innovation, 1(3), 100047. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xinn.2020.100047
Background: United States government scientists estimate that COVID-19 may kill tens of thousands of Americans. Many of the pre-existing conditions that increase the risk of death in those with COVID-19 are the same diseases that are affected by long-term exposure to air pollution. We investigated whether long-term average exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is associated with an increased risk of COVID-19 death in the United States.
Design: A nationwide, cross-sectional study using county-level data.
Data sources: COVID-19 death counts were collected for more than 3,000 counties in the United States (representing 98% of the population) up to April 22, 2020 from Johns Hopkins University, Center for Systems Science and Engineering Coronavirus Resource Center.
Methods: We fit negative binomial mixed models using county-level COVID-19 deaths as the outcome and county-level long-term average of PM2.5 as the exposure. In the main analysis, we adjusted by 20 potential confounding factors including population size, age distribution, population density, time since the beginning of the outbreak, time since state’s issuance of stay-at-home order, hospital beds, number of individuals tested, weather, and socioeconomic and behavioral variables such as obesity and smoking. We included a random intercept by state to account for potential correlation in counties within the same state. We conducted more than 68 additional sensitivity analyses.
Results: We found that an increase of only 1 μg/m3 in PM2.5 is associated with an 8% increase in the COVID-19 death rate (95% confidence interval [CI]: 2%, 15%). The results were statistically significant and robust to secondary and sensitivity analyses.
Conclusions: A small increase in long-term exposure to PM2.5 leads to a large increase in the COVID-19 death rate. Despite inherent limitations of the ecological study design, our results underscore the importance of continuing to enforce existing air pollution regulations to protect human health both during and after the COVID-19 crisis. The data and code are publicly available so our analyses can be updated routinely.
Published Sep 18, 2020
Wu, X., Nethery, R. C., Sabath, B., Braun, D., & Dominici, F. (2020). Covid-19 PM2.5: a national study on long-term exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States. Retrieved December 10, 2020, from A national study on long-term exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States
President Trump has made dismantling environmental regulations a priority during his time in office. While some of these moves remain mired in legal uncertainty, the Trump administration has successfully unraveled the majority of Obama-era climate policies, including the Clean Power Plan, fuel economy standards for passenger vehicles, and efforts to curb potent greenhouse gases (GHGs) from refrigerants and air conditioning. Just last month, the administration eased regulations preventing methane leakage from oil and gas facilities. Rhodium Group has analyzed the isolated implications of each of these regulatory rollbacks on US GHG emissions in previous research. In this note, we examine their aggregate effect. We find that Trump’s major climate policy rollbacks have the potential to add 1.8 gigatons of CO2-equivalent to the atmosphere by 2035. This cumulative impact is equivalent to nearly one-third of all US emissions in 2019.
Published Sep 17, 2020
Hannah Pitt, Kate Larsen, M. Y. (2020). The Undoing of US Climate Policy: The Emissions Impact of Trump-Era Rollbacks. https://rhg.com/research/the-rollback-of-us-climate-policy/
Background: While various policies have been implemented globally to mitigate climate change and reduce exposure to toxic air pollutants, policy assessments have considered few if any of the benefi...
Published Jul 29, 2020
Perera, F., Cooley, D., Berberian, A., Mills, D., & Kinney, P. (2020). Co-Benefits to Children’s Health of the U.S. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Environmental Health Perspectives, 128(7), 077006. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP6706
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is an ambient trace-gas result of both natural and anthropogenic processes. Long-term exposure to NO2 may cause a wide spectrum of severe health problems such as hypertension, diabetes, heart and cardiovascular diseases and even death. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between long-term exposure to NO2 and coronavirus fatality. The Sentinel-5P is used for mapping the tropospheric NO2 distribution and the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis for evaluating the atmospheric capability to disperse the pollution. The spatial analysis has been conducted on a regional scale and combined with the number of death cases taken from 66 administrative regions in Italy, Spain, France and Germany. Results show that out of the 4443 fatality cases, 3487 (78%) were in five regions located in north Italy and central Spain. Additionally, the same five regions show the highest NO2 concentrations combined with downwards airflow which prevent an efficient dispersion of air pollution. These results indicate that the long-term exposure to this pollutant may be one of the most important contributors to fatality caused by the COVID-19 virus in these regions and maybe across the whole world.
Published Jul 15, 2020
Yaron Ogen, Assessing nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels as a contributing factor to coronavirus (COVID-19) fatality, Science of The Total Environment, Volume 726, 2020, 138605, ISSN 0048-9697, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138605. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720321215)
The present work estimates the increased risk of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 by establishing the linkage between the mortality rate in the infected cases and the air pollution, specifically Particulate Matters (PM) with aerodynamic diameters ≤ 10 µm and ≤ 2.5 µm. Data related to nine Asian cities are analyzed using statistical approaches, including the analysis of variance and regression model. The present work suggests that there exists a positive correlation between the level of air pollution of a region and the lethality related to COVID-19, indicating air pollution to be an elemental and concealed factor in aggravating the global burden of deaths related to COVID-19. Past exposures to high level of PM2.5 over a long period, is found to significantly correlate with present COVID-19 mortality per unit reported cases (p < 0.05) compared to PM10, with non-significant correlation (p = 0.118). The finding of the study can help government agencies, health ministries and policymakers globally to take proactive steps by promoting immunity-boosting supplements and appropriate masks to reduce the risks associated with COVID-19 in highly polluted areas.
Published Jul 15, 2020
Gupta, A., Bherwani, H., Gautam, S. et al. Air pollution aggravating COVID-19 lethality? Exploration in Asian cities using statistical models. Environ Dev Sustain 23, 6408–6417 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-020-00878-9
Knowledge of whether serious adverse pregnancy outcomes are associated with increasingly widespread effects of climate change in the US would be crucial for the obstetrical medical community and for women and families across the country. This review suggests that increasingly common environmental exposures exacerbated by climate change are significantly associated with serious adverse pregnancy outcomes across the US.
Published Jun 18, 2020
Bekkar, B., Pacheco, S., Basu, R., & DeNicola, N. (2020). Association of Air Pollution and Heat Exposure With Preterm Birth, Low Birth Weight, and Stillbirth in the US. JAMA Network Open, 3(6), e208243. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.8243
Long-term exposure to air pollutant concentrations is known to cause chronic lung
inflammation, a condition that may promote increased severity of COVID-19 syndrome
caused by the novel coronavirus. In this paper, we empirically investigate the ecologic
association between long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) concentration and
excess deaths in the first quarter of 2020 in municipalities of Northern Italian. The study
accounts for potentially spatial confounding factors related to urbanization that may have
influenced the spreading of the novel coronavirus. Our epidemiological analysis uses
geographical information (e.g., municipalities) and Poisson regression to assess whether
both ambient PM concentration and excess mortality have a similar spatial distribution.
Preliminary evidence confirms the hypothesis and suggests a positive association of ambient
PM on excess mortality in Northern Italy
Published Jun 1, 2020
Coker, E.S., Cavalli, L., Fabrizi, E. et al. The Effects of Air Pollution on COVID-19 Related Mortality in Northern Italy. Environ Resource Econ 76, 611–634 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-020-00486-1
Managing patients with severe asthma during the coronavirus pandemic and COVID-19 is a challenge. Authorities and physicians are still learning how COVID-19 affects people with underlying diseases, and severe asthma is not an exception. Unless relevant data emerge that change our understanding of the relative safety of medications indicated in patients with asthma during this pandemic, clinicians must follow the recommendations of current evidence-based guidelines for preventing loss of control and exacerbations. Also, with the absence of data that would indicate any potential harm, current advice is to continue the administration of biological therapies during the COVID-19 pandemic in patients with asthma for whom such therapies are clearly indicated and have been effective. For patients with severe asthma infected by SARS-CoV-2, the decision to maintain or postpone biological therapy until the patient recovers should be a case-by-case based decision supported by a multidisciplinary team. A registry of cases of COVID-19 in patients with severe asthma, including those treated with biologics, will help to address a clinical challenge in which we have more questions than answers.
Published May 16, 2020
Morais-Almeida, M., Aguiar, R., Martin, B., Ansotegui, I. J., Ebisawa, M., Arruda, L. K., Caminati, M., Canonica, G. W., Carr, T., Chupp, G., Corren, J., Dávila, I., Park, H. S., Hanania, N. A., Rosenwasser, L., Sánchez-Borges, M., Virchow, J. C., Yáñez, A., Bernstein, J. A., … Bleecker, E. R. (2020). COVID-19, asthma, and biological therapies: What we need to know. In World Allergy Organization Journal (Vol. 13, Issue 5, p. 100126). Elsevier Inc. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.waojou.2020.100126