Air pollution ups Covid-19 deaths by 15% worldwide: Study

London, Oct 27 : In a major global study, researchers have revealed that long-term exposure to air pollution may be linked to 15 per cent of Covid-19 deaths worldwide.
According to the study, published in the journal Cardiovascular Research, in Europe the proportion was about 19 per cent, in North America it was 17 per cent, and in East Asia about 27 per cent.
“Since the numbers of deaths from Covid-19 are increasing all the time, it’s not possible to give exact or final numbers of Covid-19 deaths per country that can be attributed to air pollution,” said study author Jos Lelieveld from Max Planck Institute in Germany.
“However, as an example, in the UK there have been over 44,000 coronavirus deaths and we estimate that the fraction attributable to air pollution is 14 per cent, meaning that more than 6,100 deaths could be attributed to air pollution,” Lelieveld added.
The researchers used epidemiological data from the previous US and Chinese studies of air pollution and Covid-19 and the SARS outbreak in 2003, supported by additional data from Italy.
They combined this with satellite data showing global exposure to polluting fine particles known as ‘particulate matter’ that is less than or equal to 2.5 microns in diameter (known as PM2.5) to create a model to calculate the fraction of coronavirus deaths that could be attributable to long-term exposure to PM2.5.