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. 2020 Dec:34:100674.
doi: 10.1016/j.uclim.2020.100674. Epub 2020 Jul 30.

NO2 levels after the COVID-19 lockdown in Ecuador: A trade-off between environment and human health

Henry Pacheco  1 , Stephanie Díaz-López  2 , Emilio Jarre  1 , Henyerlin Pacheco  3 , Williams Méndez  4 , Ezequiel Zamora-Ledezma  1
Affiliations

NO2 levels after the COVID-19 lockdown in Ecuador: A trade-off between environment and human health

Henry Pacheco et al. Urban Clim. 2020 Dec.

Abstract

The negative effects on human health, along with the fatalities caused by the new coronavirus, have led governments worldwide to take strict measures. However, a reduction in air pollution has been found in many regions on a global scale. This study is focused on how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting on the air quality in Ecuador, one of the most alarming cases of COVID-19 contagion in Latin America, occupying the first place as regards deaths per capita. The spatio-temporal variations in NO2 concentrations in 12 highly populated cities were evaluated by comparing the NO2 tropospheric concentrations before (2019) and after (2020) the COVID-19 lockdown. The atmospheric data was collected from the TROPOMI on the Sentinel-5P satellite of the European Space Agency. A reduction in NO2 concentrations (-13%) was observed as a consequence of the COVID-19 lockdown in Ecuador. However, this reduction occurred to the greatest extent in the cases of Guayaquil (-23.4%) and Quito (-22.4%), the two most highly populated cities. Linking NO2 levels to confirmed cases/deaths of COVID-19, a strong correlation between air NO2 concentrations and the cases/mortality caused by coronavirus (r = 0.91; p<0.001) was observed. This work highlights the crucial role played by air quality as regards human health.

Keywords: Air quality; Coronavirus disease; Highly populated cities; Human health; Nitrogen dioxide; Pandemic.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Unlabelled Image
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Timeline of governmental sanitary measures as a consequence of COVID-19 outbreak in Ecuador (Presidency of the Republic of Ecuador, 2020; WHO, 2020).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
NO2 concentration in Ecuador before (March 16–31, 2019) and after (March 16–31, 2020) COVID-19 lockdown (ESA, 2020).
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Scatterplot of confirmed COVID-19 deaths and NO2 concentrations in 2019. Simple regression analysis (quadratic model) considering 12 cities in Ecuador.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Pearson correlation of COVID-19 deaths/cases vs. NO2 concentration 2019. The analysis was performed by using data from the 12 cities. *p<0.001; **p<0.01.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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