Air quality assessment of Jaipur city Rajasthan after the COVID-19 lockdown
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ABSTRACT: Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41324-022-00456-3.
SUBMITTER: Ruhela M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9244881 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:A worldwide pandemic of COVID-19 has forced the Government of Bangladesh to implement a lockdown during April-May 2020 by restricting people's movement; shutdown of industries and motor vehicles; and closing markets, public places, and schools to contain the virus. This type of strict measures caused an outcome, the reduction of urban air pollution, around the world. The present study aims to investigate the reduction of the concentration of pollutants in the air of Dhaka City and the reduction of the Air Quality Index (AQI). Necessary time-series data of the concentration of PM2.5, NO2, SO2, and CO have been collected from the archive of the Air Quality Monitoring Station of the US Embassy in Dhaka and Sentinel-5P. The time-series data have been analyzed by descriptive statistics, and AQI was calculated following an appropriate formula suggested by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) based on the criteria pollutants. The study found that the concentrations of PM2.5, NO2, SO2, and CO during April-May 2020 have been reduced by 26, 30, 07, and 07%, respectively, compared with the preceding year's concentrations. Moreover, the AQI has also been reduced by about 35% on average during the lockdown period than the same times of the previous year. However, the magnitude of pollution reduction in Dhaka is lower than in other cities and countries globally, including Delhi, Sao Paulo, Wuhan, Spain, Italy, the USA. The main reasons may include, among others, the poor implementation of lockdown (especially in the first week of April and the second fortnight of May), pre-existing pollution, transboundary pollution, incineration of solid waste, etc. This study will help policymakers figure out how to regulate pollution sources and improve the air quality of Dhaka.
| S-EPMC8128090 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Covid-19 pandemic has adversely affected all the aspects of life in adverse manner; however, a significant improvement has been observed in the air quality, due to restricted human activities amidst lockdown. Present study reports a comparison of air quality between the lockdown duration and before the lockdown duration in seven selected cities (Ajmer, Alwar, Bhiwadi, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota, and Udaipur) of Rajasthan (India). The period of analysis is 10 March 2020 to 20 March 2020 (before lockdown period) versus 25 March to 17 May 2020 (during lockdown period divided into three phases). In order to understand the variations in the level of pollutant accumulation amid the lockdown period, a trend analysis is performed for 24 h daily average data for five pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, NO2, SO2, and ozone). Fig. aGraphical abstract.
| S-EPMC7362326 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that emerged in the city of Wuhan, China, last year has since become the COVID-19 pandemic across all continents. To restrict the spread of the virus pandemic, the Government of India imposed a lockdown from 25 March 2020. In India, Kannur district was identified as the first "hotspot" of virus transmission and a "triple-lockdown" was implemented for a span of twenty days from 20 April 2020. This article highlights the variations of surface O3, NO, NO2, CO, SO2, NH3, VOC's, PM10, PM2.5 and meteorological parameters at the time of pre-lockdown, lockdown and triple-lockdown days at Kannur town in south India using ground-based analyzers. From pre-lockdown days to triple-lockdown days, surface O3 concentration was found to increase by 22% in this VOC limited environment. NO and NO2 concentrations were decreased by 61% and 71% respectively. The concentration of PM10 and PM2.5 were observed to decline significantly by 61% and 53% respectively. Reduction in PM10 during lockdown and triple-lockdown days enhanced the intensity of solar radiation reaching the lower troposphere, and increased air temperature and reduced the relative humidity. Owing to this, surface O3 production over Kannur was found to have increased during triple-lockdown days. The concentration of CO (67%), VOCs (61%), SO2 (62%) and NH3 (16%) were found to decrease significantly from pre-lockdown days to triple-lockdown days. The air quality index revealed that the air quality at the observational site was clean during the lockdown.
| S-EPMC7397983 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The first COVID-19 case in Brazil was confirmed on February 25, 2020. On March 16, the state's governor declared public health emergency in the city of Rio de Janeiro and partial lockdown measures came into force a week later. The main goal of this work is to discuss the impact of the measures on the air quality of the city by comparing the particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone concentrations determined during the partial lockdown with values obtained in the same period of 2019 and also with the weeks prior to the virus outbreak. Concentrations varied with substantial differences among pollutants and also among the three studied monitoring stations. CO levels showed the most significant reductions (30.3-48.5%) since they were related to light-duty vehicular emissions. NO2 also showed reductions while PM10 levels were only reduced in the first lockdown week. In April, an increase in vehicular flux and movement of people was observed mainly as a consequence of the lack of consensus about the importance and need of social distancing and lockdown. Ozone concentrations increased probably due to the decrease in nitrogen oxides level. When comparing with the same period of 2019, NO2 and CO median values were 24.1-32.9 and 37.0-43.6% lower. Meteorological interferences, mainly the transport of pollutants from the industrial areas might have also impacted the results.
| S-EPMC7194802 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic has put much of the world into lockdown, as one unintended upside to this response, the air quality has been widely reported to have improved worldwide. Existing studies examine the environmental effect of lockdowns at a city- or country-level, few examines it from a global perspective. Using a novel COVID-19 government response tracker dataset, combining the daily air pollution data and weather data across 597 major cities worldwide between January 1, 2020, and July 5, 2020, this study quantifies the causal impacts of 8 types of lockdown measures on changes of a range of individual pollutants based on a difference-in-differences design. The results show that the NO2 air quality index value falls more precipitously (23-37%) relative to the pre-lockdown period, followed by PM10 (14-20%), SO2 (2-20%), PM2.5 (7-16%), and CO (7-11%), but the O3 increases 10-27%. Furthermore, intra/intercity travel restrictions have a better performance in curbing air pollution. These results are robust to a set of alternative specifications, including different panel sizes, independent variables, estimation strategies. The heterogeneity analysis in terms of different types of cities shows that the lockdown effects are more remarkable in cities from lower-income, more industrialized, and populous countries. We also do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the subsequent health benefits following such improvement, and the expected averted premature deaths due to air pollution declines are around 99,270 to 146,649 among 76 countries and regions involved in this study during the COVID-19 lockdown. These findings underscore the importance of continuous air pollution control strategies to protect human health and reduce the associated social welfare loss both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
| S-EPMC7525347 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Meteorology and long-term trends in air pollutant concentrations may obscure the results from short-term policies implemented to improve air quality. This study presents changes in CO, NO2, O3, SO2, PM10, and PM2.5 based on their anomalies during the COVID-19 partial (Phase 2) and total (Phase 3) lockdowns in Mexico City (MCMA). To minimise the impact of the air pollutant long-term trends, pollutant anomalies were calculated using as baseline truncated Fourier series, fitted with data from 2016 to 2019, and then compared with those from the lockdown. Additionally, days with stagnant conditions and heavy rain were excluded to reduce the impact of extreme weather changes. Satellite observations for NO2 and CO were used to contrast the ground-based derived results. During the lockdown Phase 2, only NO2 exhibited significant decreases (p < 0.05) of between 10 and 23% due to reductions in motor vehicle emissions. By contrast, O3 increased (p < 0.05) between 16 and 40% at the same sites where NO2 decreased. During Phase 3, significant decreases (p < 0.05) were observed for NO2 (43%), PM10 (20%), and PM2.5 (32%) in response to the total lockdown. Although O3 concentrations were lower in Phase 3 than during Phase 2, those did not decrease (p < 0.05) from the baseline at any site despite the total lockdown. SO2 decreased only during Phase 3 in a near-road environment. Satellite observations confirmed that NO2 decreased and CO stabilised during the total lockdown. Air pollutant changes during the lockdown could be overestimated between 2 and 10-fold without accounting for the influences of meteorology and long-term trends in pollutant concentrations. Air quality improved significantly during the lockdown driven by reduced NO2 and PM2.5 emissions despite increases in O3, resulting in health benefits for the MCMA population. A health assessment conducted suggested that around 588 deaths related to air pollution exposure were averted during the lockdown. Our results show that to reduce O3 within the MCMA, policies must focus on reducing VOCs emissions from non-mobile sources. The measures implemented during the COVID-19 lockdowns provide valuable information to reduce air pollution through a range of abatement strategies for emissions other than from motor vehicles.
| S-EPMC8026884 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Highlights • Variations in air quality in terms of CO, SO2, PM10, O3 and NO2 levels were studied.• The lockdown of Spain was not able to reduce severe air pollution in all its forms.• Significant reductions of NO2 levels were achieved in most cities.• Increases of O3 pollution levels were found in several cities. The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated into one of the largest crises of the 21st Century. The new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, responsible for COVID-19, has spread rapidly all around the world. The Spanish Government was forced to declare a nationwide lockdown in view of the rapidly spreading virus and high mortality rate in the nation. This study investigated the impact of short-term lockdown during the period from March 15th to April 12th 2020 on the atmospheric levels of CO, SO2, PM10, O3, and NO2 over 11 representative Spanish cities. The possible influence of several meteorological factors (temperature, precipitation, wind, sunlight hours, minimum and maximum pressure) on the pollutants' levels were also considered. The results obtained show that the 4-week lockdown had significant impact on reducing the atmospheric levels of NO2 in all cities except for the small city of Santander as well as CO, SO2, and PM10 in some cities, but resulted in increase of O3 level. Graphical abstract Image, graphical abstract
| S-EPMC7402215 | biostudies-literature
Project description:India enforced stringent lockdown measures on March 24, 2020 to mitigate the spread of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronovirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Here, we examined the impact of lockdown on the air quality index (AQI) [including ambient particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), and ammonia (NH3)] and tropospheric NO2 and O3 densities through Sentinel-5 satellite data approximately 1 d post-lockdown and one month pre-lockdown and post-lockdown. Our findings revealed a marked reduction in the ambient AQI (estimated mean reduction of 17.75% and 20.70%, respectively), tropospheric NO2 density, and land surface temperature (LST) during post-lockdown compared with the pre-lockdown period or corresponding months in 2019, except for a few sites with substantial coal mining and active power plants. We observed a modest increase in the O3 density post-lockdown, thereby indicating improved tropospheric air quality. As a favorable outcome of the COVID-19 lockdown, road accident-related mortalities declined by 72-folds. Cities with poor air quality correlate with higher COVID-19 cases and deaths (r = 0.504 and r = 0.590 for NO2; r = 0.744 and r = 0.435 for AQI). Conversely, low mortality was reported in cities with better air quality. These results show a correlation between the COVID-19 vulnerable regions and AQI hotspots, thereby suggesting that air pollution may exacerbate clinical manifestations of the disease. However, a prolonged lockdown may nullify the beneficial environmental outcomes by adversely affecting socioeconomic and health aspects.
| S-EPMC7590817 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The UK implemented a lockdown in Spring (2020) to curtail the person-to-person transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Measures restricted movements to one outing per day for exercise and shopping, otherwise most people were restricted to their dwelling except for key workers (e.g. medical, supermarkets, and transport). In this study, we quantified changes to air quality across the United Kingdom from 30/03/2020 to 03/05/2020 (weeks 14-18), the period of most stringent travel restrictions. Daily pollutant measurements of NO2, O3 and PM2.5 from the national network of monitoring sites during this period were compared with measurements over the same period during 2017-19. Comparisons were also made with predicted concentrations for the 2020 period from business-as-usual (BAU) modelling, where the contributions of normal anthropogenic activities were estimated under the observed meteorological conditions. During the lockdown study period there was a 69% reduction in traffic overall (74% reduction in light and 35% in heavy vehicles). Measurements from 129 monitoring stations, identified mean reductions in NO2 of 38.3% (-8.8 μg/m3) and PM2.5 of 16.5% (-2.2 μg/m3). Improvements in NO2 and PM2.5 were largest at urban traffic sites and more modest at background locations where a large proportion of the population live. In contrast, O3 concentrations on average increased by 7.6% (+4.8 μg/m3) with the largest increases at roadside sites due to reductions in local emissions of NO. A lack of VOC monitoring limited our capacity to interpret changes in O3 at urban background locations. BAU models predicted comparable NO2 reductions and O3 gains, although PM2.5 episodes would have been more prominent without lockdown. Results demonstrate the relatively modest contribution of traffic to air quality, suggesting that sustained improvements in air quality require actions across various sectors, including working with international and European initiatives on long-range transport air pollutants, especially PM2.5 and O3.
| S-EPMC7677678 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The present study deals with the impact of the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 on the ambient air quality in the capital city of India. Real-time data were collected from eight continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations measuring important air quality parameters (NO2, PM10 and PM2.5). Results revealed that the city's air quality had improved significantly during the lockdown period due to COVID-19 outbreak. The concentration of gaseous and particulate matter during the lockdown period (March-May 2020) declined significantly compared with the preceding years' data from the same timeframe. However, the ambient air quality deteriorates with the onset of unlocking phases and post-monsoon season (October 2020). Higher concentration of NO2, PM10 and PM2.5 were recorded at industrial (S1 and S2) and hotspot (S4 and S5) sites. The lowest concentrations of studied pollutants were observed during the first phase of lockdown (March 24 - May 14, 2020). The present study, once again, establishes the direct effect of anthropogenic activities and deteriorating ambient air quality of Delhi.
| S-EPMC8339501 | biostudies-literature