Environmental Inequality Deepened During the COVID-19 in the Developing World

[NNadir]

The "Scientific Opinion" paper to which I refer in this post is this one: Environmental Inequality Deepened During the COVID-19 in the Developing World (Yilin Chen, Niru Senthilkumar, Huizhong Shen, and Guofeng Shen Environmental Science & Technology 2021 55 (1), 7-8)

Like all Covid papers, this brief paper is open sourced, and can be read in full at the link.

Some excerpts:

Air pollution is a significant environmental risk factor affecting human health. In many developing countries around the world, exposure to severe air pollution has been associated with thousands to millions of premature deaths every year from cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, etc. Sources of air pollution are complex, but major sources include transportation, industrial, and energy production emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass. Unequal exposure to air pollutants is often linked with disparities in socioeconomic status (SES). For example, low SES communities often reside closer to major sources of emissions including highways, power plants, and industrial facilities, and experience higher exposure levels of particulate matter (PM2.5) and gas precursors such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfate dioxide (SO2), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).(1) In rural areas in many developing countries, low SES communities may experience enhanced PM2.5 exposure from biomass and solid fuel combustion for heating and cooking.(2)

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in swift and radical changes in human activities, including a dramatic reduction in transportation emissions during strict lockdown periods. As a result, NO2 was found to decline during the quarantine period over multiple countries hit by the pandemic.(3) Aside from that, the impact of the pandemic on air quality is mixed...

...Wu and colleagues (2020)(7) fitted negative binomial mixed models using COVID-19 deaths and PM2.5 at the county level in the U.S. as the outcome and exposure, respectively. After adjusting several confounding factors, they found that an increase of 1 μg/m3 in PM2.5 was associated with an increase of 5% (2–15% as 95% CI) in the COVID-19 death rate. Similar links between ambient air pollution exposure and COVID-19 incidence and mortality was also reported in China,(8,9,11) India,(3) Pakistan,(11) and Indonesia.(11) It has been suggested that the ambient aerosols facilitate the transmission of the virus.(8)...

...As the pandemic goes on, COVID-19 gets widely spreading in rural areas in developing countries. The observed positive relationship between enhanced air pollutant exposures and COVID-19 deaths indicates that the pandemic may be further deepening environmental inequality. Over half of the population in the developing world still rely on solid fuel as their household energy source, exposing to a high level of PM2.5 daily. Besides previous chronic exposure to ambient NO2 and PM2.5, indoor air pollution exposure in developing countries would increase during quarantine, especially in those households heavily relying on solid fuels.(14) As a known leading environmental risk factor for many diseases and premature death, household solid-fuel use may increase the risk to develop severe symptoms among the infected population in the developing world...

I have no additional comment; it speaks for itself.