Dataset Information

Air pollution perception in ten countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT: As largely documented in the literature, the stark restrictions enforced worldwide in 2020 to curb the COVID-19 pandemic also curtailed the production of air pollutants to some extent. This study investigates the perception of the air pollution as assessed by individuals located in ten countries: Australia, Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Iran, Italy, Norway, South Africa and the USA. The perceptions towards air quality were evaluated by employing an online survey administered in May 2020. Participants (N = 9394) in the ten countries expressed their opinions according to a Likert-scale response. A reduction in pollutant concentration was clearly perceived, albeit to a different extent, by all populations. The survey participants located in India and Italy perceived the largest drop in the air pollution concentration; conversely, the smallest variation was perceived among Chinese and Norwegian respondents. Among all the demographic indicators considered, only gender proved to be statistically significant.

SUBMITTER: Lou B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8216327 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Air pollution perception in ten countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lou Baowen B Barbieri Diego Maria DM Passavanti Marco M Hui Cang C Gupta Akshay A Hoff Inge I Lessa Daniela Antunes DA Sikka Gaurav G Chang Kevin K Fang Kevin K Lam Louisa L Maharaj Brij B Ghasemi Navid N Qiao Yaning Y Adomako Solomon S Foroutan Mirhosseini Ali A Naik Bhaven B Banerjee Arunabha A Wang Fusong F Tucker Andrew A Liu Zhuangzhuang Z Wijayaratna Kasun K Naseri Sahra S Yu Lei L Chen Hao H Shu Benan B Goswami Shubham S Peprah Prince P Hessami Amir A Abbas Montasir M Agarwal Nithin N

Ambio 20210621 3

As largely documented in the literature, the stark restrictions enforced worldwide in 2020 to curb the COVID-19 pandemic also curtailed the production of air pollutants to some extent. This study investigates the perception of the air pollution as assessed by individuals located in ten countries: Australia, Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Iran, Italy, Norway, South Africa and the USA. The perceptions towards air quality were evaluated by employing an online survey administered in May 2020. Particip ...[more]

PMID: 34155609

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Project description:This research was carried out using the open-source database system along with the continuous air quality monitoring station results from global data sets during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India and the global. Our purpose of this research is to study the improvement of air quality and human mortality rates in countries worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Worldwide air quality data were collected from > 12,000 continuous air quality monitoring stations on six continents covering 1000 major cities from over 100 countries. Here, we discussed the implementation of the open-source data set of basic air pollutants such as PM 2.5, NO2, temperature, relative humidity, and Air Quality Index variation during the pre-lockdown and lockdown pandemic COVID-19 in India and described the global aspect. An average concentration of PM 2.5 (145.51 μg/m3), NO2 (21.64 μg/m3), and AQI index (55.58) continuously decreased. The variation of PM 2.5, NO2, normally shows more than 25 μg/m3 every year, but during the COVID-19 lockdown period (April 2020) continuously decreased below 20 μg/m3. Similarly, the AQI index and meteorological factors such as temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed variation decreased significantly in the many countries in the world. In Asian countries, air quality improved during the national lockdown especially in the most polluted cities globally such as Beijing, Delhi, and Nanjing and also in developed cities like Madrid, New York, Paris, Seoul, Sydney, Tokyo. Furthermore, the reduction of particulate matter was in about 46%, and other gaseous pollutants during the lockdown period were observed in a 54% reduction. We are witnessing pollution reductions which add significantly to improvements in air quality. This is due to the massive decrease in the use of fossil fuel, which in turn reduces production and traffic in general. People nowadays are now willing to see a comparatively healthier world with bleached skies and natural ecosystems. This research finding demonstrates potential safety benefits associated with improving air quality and mortality rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in decreases in mortality rates in India and around the world.

Project description:Stringent pollution control measures are generally applied to improve air quality, especially in the Spring Festival in China. Meanwhile, human activities are reduced significantly due to nationwide lockdown measures to curtail the COVID-19 spreading in 2020. Herein, to better understand the influence of control measures and meteorology on air pollution, this study compared the variation of pollution source and their health risk during the 2019 and 2020 Spring Festival in Linfen, China. Results revealed that the average concentration of PM2.5 in 2020 decreased by 39.0% when compared to the 2019 Spring Festival. Organic carbon (OC) and SO42- were the primary contributor to PM2.5 with the value of 19.5% (21.1%) and 23.5% (25.5%) in 2019 (2020) Spring Festival, respectively. Based on the positive matrix factorization (PMF) model, six pollution sources of PM2.5 were indicated. Vehicle emissions (VE) had the maximum reduction in pollution source concentration (28.39 μg· m-3), followed by dust fall (DF) (11.47 μg· m-3), firework burning (FB) (10.39 μg· m-3), coal combustion (CC) (8.54 μg· m-3), and secondary inorganic aerosol (SIA) (3.95 μg· m-3). However, the apportionment concentration of biomass burning (BB) increased by 78.7%, indicating a significant increase in biomass combustion under control measures. PAHs-lifetime lung cancer risk (ILCR) of VE, CC, FB, BB, and DF, decreased by 44.6%, 43.2%, 34.1%, 21.3%, and 2.0%, respectively. Additionally, the average contribution of meteorological conditions on PM2.5 in 2020 increased by 20.21% compared to 2019 Spring Festival, demonstrating that meteorological conditions played a crucial role in located air pollution. This study revealed that the existing control measures in Linfen were efficient to reduce air pollution and health risk, whereas more BB emissions were worthy of further attention. Furthermore, the result was conducive to developing more effective control measures and putting more attention into unfavorable meteorological conditions in Linfen.

Dataset Information

Air pollution perception in ten countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Publications

Air pollution perception in ten countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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