A study estimates that exposure to air pollution increases deaths from Covid by 15% worldwide

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That air pollution has consequences for health is nothing new: strokes, lung cancers, chronic and acute pneumopathies, including asthma ... It is also not new that mortality from coronavirus increases, as some others have pointed out study in these months, although the figures vary.

Now a new research, published this Tuesday in

, has estimated the proportion of deaths from coronavirus that could be attributed to the exacerbated effects of air pollution for all countries on the planet and attributes to this factor

.

In Europe the proportion is approximately 19%, in North America 17% and in East Asia 27%.

In the study, the authors indicate that these proportions are an estimate of "the fraction of deaths from Covid that could be avoided if the population were exposed to hypothetical lower levels of air pollution, without emissions related to fossil fuels and other anthropogenic factors. [caused by humans] ".

The authors add that this "attributable fraction does not imply a direct cause-effect relationship between air pollution and Covid mortality (although it is possible). Instead, it refers to the relationship between the two elements, direct and indirect, is that is to say, that it

of the virus infection ".

The researchers have used epidemiological data from previous studies from the US and China on air pollution and Covid-19 and the SARS outbreak in 2003, supported by additional data from Italy.

They combined it with satellite data that show

, specifically those smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5), with information on atmospheric conditions and with pollution monitoring networks. on the ground to create a model that estimates the fraction of coronavirus deaths that could be attributed to long-term exposure to PM2.5.

The researchers, who have been based on epidemiological data collected the third week of June of this year, believe it necessary to carry out a full evaluation when the pandemic subsides.

Specifying by country the estimates vary.

Thus, air pollution contributed to 29% of deaths from coronavirus in the Czech Republic, 27% in China, 26% in Germany, 22% in Switzerland, 21% in Belgium, 19% in the Netherlands, 18 % in France, 16% in Sweden, 15% in Italy, 14% in the United Kingdom, 12% in Brazil, 11% in Portugal, 8% in Ireland, 6% in Israel, 3% in Australia and only 1% in New Zealand.

.

"Since the number of deaths from Covid-19 is increasing all the time, it is not possible to give exact or final numbers of deaths from coronavirus by country that can be attributed to air pollution. However, as an example, in the UK it has There have been more than 44,000 deaths from Covid and we estimate that the fraction attributable to air pollution is 14%, which means that

. In the US, it has more than 220,000 deaths, with a percentage of the 18%, 40,000 deaths could be attributed to air pollution, "says Professor Jos Lelieveld at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Germany), one of the authors of this study.

"When people breathe in polluted air, very small pollutant particles, PM2.5, migrate from the lungs to the blood and blood vessels, causing inflammation and severe oxidative stress, which is an imbalance between free radicals and oxidants in the body that normally repair damage to cells. This

. The SARS-CoV-2 virus also enters the body through the lungs, causing similar damage to blood vessels, and is now considered an endothelial disease ", explains another of the authors, Professor Thomas Münzel of the University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (Germany).

"If both prolonged exposure to air pollution and Covid-19 infection come together, then we will have an added adverse effect on health, particularly with respect to the heart and blood vessels, leading to increased vulnerability and decreased resistance to Covid. If the person already has heart disease, air pollution and coronavirus infection will cause problems that

"continues Münzel.

Regarding previous work that suggests that fine particles can prolong the atmospheric life of infectious viruses and help them infect more people, Lelieveld said that "it is likely that suspended particles play a role in 'overspread events' by favoring the broadcast".

"

, which is involved in the way that SARS-CoV-2 infects cells. So we have a 'double impact': the Air pollution damages the lungs and increases the activity of ACE-2, leading to greater absorption of the virus by the lungs and probably by the blood vessels and the heart, "adds Münzel.

The study, which is also the first of its kind to distinguish between fossil fuel-related and other man-made sources of air pollution, concludes: "Our results suggest the potential for substantial benefits of reducing exposure to pollution. A lesson from our environmental perspective of the pandemic is that it is necessary to accelerate the search for effective policies to reduce anthropogenic emissions, which cause both air pollution and climate change. The pandemic will end with the vaccination of the population or with herd immunity from widespread infection of the population. However,

. The transition to a green economy with clean and renewable energy sources will promote public and environmental health locally by improving air quality and globally by l

mimic climate change. "

Among the limitations of the research, it is noteworthy that epidemiological data for the United States was collected at the county level and not individually, which makes it difficult to exclude confounding factors, and that the data has been collected in upper-middle-income countries (China , USA corroborated with data from Europe), but the calculations were made for all countries in the world, which means that the results for the low-income may be less robust.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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