Assignment 2: Air Pollution and Coronavirus - Draft 2 (Summary & Reader Response)

 

In the article, ‘What we do and don’t know about the links between air pollution and coronavirus’, Lewis (2020) addresses the current pandemic that we are going through, as well as the current global pollution issue persisting, we tend to draw the conclusion that air pollution is associated with coronavirus. It also includes Lewis’s perspective on how he feels about other factors that affect the coronavirus instead of just air pollution, for example, Lewis claimed that there are some factors which create an opportunity for the virus to spread for instances population density. The reason why the writer feels people would assume they are interconnected is due to "Such data is well-organised, traceable and has become easy to access." Based on the points elaborated, it is hard not to think that both air pollution and coronavirus are linked. The author did mention about population density and the global connection, on how it is a factor that contributes and how they are linked.

One of the factors is air pollution. How air pollution is being measured is through the long-term average exposure to fine particulate matter which is what we call PM2.5. In an article by Bon (2020), he mentioned that ‘The study found that even a small increase of 1 μg/m3 in PM2.5 levels were associated with an 8% increase in COVID-19-related fatality’. In addition, in a report by Odone (2020), it stated that " Lombardy is disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 related mortality, with approximately 53% of Italy’s COVID-19 deaths as of April 15, 2020". Based on the European Environmental Agency 2019, Lombardy was identified as one of the highly polluted areas in Italy due to its heavy industrialisation. Drawing from this information, a relationship between air pollution and the coronavirus can be observed. Hence, summarising that the severity of air pollution is correlated to the spread of coronavirus. 

In addition, the data that has been collected from SARS, has also been made readily available and researchers tend to associate how both of them are similar. Lau (2020) stated that "it is anticipated that a similar observation may be found in the COVID-19 pandemic, providing an indication of how air pollution may affect a person infected with COVID-19". In my opinion, linking as to how air pollution and coronavirus are correlated, from past data, and how the author failed to expand on this topic.

One of the factors that the author failed to build on is how global travel connections play a part in the spread of coronavirus. Knowing that a travel ban has been implemented by different countries at a different point in time. This results in more infected people entering and leaving the country, causing the spread of the virus to increase in different areas and not be contained. According to an article by Professor Kuhl (2020) "results suggest that emerging the pattern of the COVID-19 outbreak closely followed global mobility patterns of air passenger travel". Without a doubt, if the travel ban could have been implemented earlier, preventing the spread of the coronavirus to different countries and region, for instances if Singapore implemented a travel ban earlier, there might have lesser community cases.

Lastly, one of the factors the author did not explore much on is population density. It is easy for coronavirus to spread in the highly populated area as the virus transmits from one person to another through saliva. According to Bray, Gibson, & White (2020) "we found that the strongest predictors of the rate of deaths involving COVID-19 at the local authority level was population density and ethnicity’" It should be noted that the impact of population density causes an impact on the growth of cases with coronavirus, crowding in one area will increase the chances that the virus will spread, that’s why affected patients are being isolated in their own wards, or in lockdown notice at home.

Altogether, knowing that air pollution and coronavirus do have a link, due to past the experience previous pandemic like SARS, as well as how there is an increase in fatality to coronavirus when there is an increase in air pollution. Not ruling out that there are many other factors that linked to coronavirus including global connection and population density.

 

Reference

 Alastair Lewis. (2020, June 16). What we do and don't know about the links between air pollution and coronavirus. The Conversation.  https://theconversation.com/what-we-do-and-dont-know-about-the-links-between-air-pollution-and-coronavirus-137746

Coker, E., Cavalli, L., Fabrizi, E., Guastella, G., Lippo, E., Parisi, M., . . . Vergalli, S. (2020, August 4). The Effects of Air Pollution on COVID-19 Related Mortality in Northern Italy. National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7399615/

C.    Lau, B. (2020, September 10). How Air Pollution Contributes to the Spread of COVID-19. Earth.org.  https://earth.org/air-pollution-exacerbating-the-spread-of-covid-19/

D.    T. (2020, May 04). How COVID-19 the spread has been contained by travel bans. Eureka Alert. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/tfg-hcs050420.php

E.     Bray, I., Gibson, A., & White, J. (2020, July 07). Coronavirus disease 2019 mortality: A multivariate ecological analysis in relation to ethnicity, population density, obesity, deprivation and pollution. Public Health. ScienceDirect. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033350620302948

Updated on: 15 October 2020. 10:33am