Better air can save more lives than the corona virus takes

The corona virus has affected us so much that it is visible from space.

NASA has shown it in satellite images of China, where air pollution dropped dramatically over several weeks of quarantine. And now the same pattern is visible on satellite images of Italy.

Both measurements show that nitrogen dioxide levels - a toxic but short-lived gas - have fallen sharply.

Since air pollution is one of the most common causes of death globally, emissions reductions can have major consequences. Every year, at least seven million people die prematurely due to air pollution.

Scientist Marshall Burke of Standford University asked the controversial question: Will we save more lives due to reduced emissions than those who die from the coronavirus?

In the calculation he published on his personal blog, Marshall Burke concludes that emissions reductions in China may have prevented 1,400 deaths of children under 5 years and 52,000 deaths of people over 70.

Bertil Forsberg, professor of environmental medicine at Umeå University, thinks the calculation is a little overstated. He does not believe that the reduction in the number of deaths will be so great, but that it will still outweigh the deaths from the corona center.

"Even if you look only for a short time, the decline in mortality should be as great as the increase seen from the virus epidemic," says Bertil Forsberg.

It is mainly deaths in risk groups that will decrease.

"If the levels of particles from traffic and industries in a region are lowered over a couple of months, it is likely that the reduction in mortality would be around 2-5%, which is mainly driven by fewer deaths from cardiovascular disease among older people," says Forsberg.

But he wants to emphasize that we should not have a corona outbreak to overcome the air pollution.

"It's rather that it tells us how many deaths we have due to bad air, that many millions of people die each year because of high levels of air pollution," says Forsberg.

Better air in our cities can also help people from getting sick with the corona virus.

Researchers who analyzed the SARS outbreak in China in 2003 found that people living in areas with polluted air had twice the chance of dying from the disease than those living in areas with better air.