Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Dec:191:110129.
doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2020.110129. Epub 2020 Aug 24.

The role of air pollution (PM and NO2) in COVID-19 spread and lethality: A systematic review

Chiara Copat  1 , Antonio Cristaldi  2 , Maria Fiore  2 , Alfina Grasso  2 , Pietro Zuccarello  2 , Salvatore Santo Signorelli  3 , Gea Oliveri Conti  2 , Margherita Ferrante  2
Affiliations

The role of air pollution (PM and NO2) in COVID-19 spread and lethality: A systematic review

Chiara Copat et al. Environ Res. 2020 Dec.

Abstract

A new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has determined a pneumonia outbreak in China (Wuhan, Hubei Province) in December 2019, called COVID-19 disease. In addition to the person-to person transmission dynamic of the novel respiratory virus, it has been recently studied the role of environmental factors in accelerate SARS-CoV-2 spread and its lethality. The time being, air pollution has been identified as the largest environmental cause of disease and premature death in the world. It affects body's immunity, making people more vulnerable to pathogens. The hypothesis that air pollution, resulting from a combination of factors such as meteorological data, level of industrialization as well as regional topography, can acts both as a carrier of the infection and as a worsening factor of the health impact of COVID-19 disease, has been raised recently. With this review, we want to provide an update state of art relating the role of air pollution, in particular PM2.5, PM10 and NO2, in COVID-19 spread and lethality. The Authors, who first investigated this association, often used different research methods or not all include confounding factors whenever possible. In addition, to date incidence data are underestimated in all countries and to a lesser extent also mortality data. For this reason, the cases included in the reviewed studies cannot be considered conclusive. Although it determines important limitations for direct comparison of results, and more studies are needed to strengthen scientific evidences and support firm conclusions, major findings are consistent, highlighting the important contribution of PM2.5 and NO2 as triggering of the COVID-19 spread and lethality, and with a less extent also PM10, although the potential effect of airborne virus exposure it has not been still demonstrated.

Keywords: Air pollution; COVID-19; Nitrogen dioxide; Pandemic; Particulate matter.

PubMed Disclaimer

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

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
PRISMA Flow Diagram of identification, screening and inclusion of studies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Adhikari A., Yin J. Short-term effects of ambient ozone, PM2.5, and meteorological factors on COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths in queens, New York. Int. J. Environ. Res. Publ. Health. 2020;17 doi: 10.3390/ijerph17114047. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Alifano M., Alifano P., Forgez P., Iannelli A. Renin-angiotensin system at the heart of COVID-19 pandemic. Biochimie. 2020 doi: 10.1016/j.biochi.2020.04.008. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Baccini M., Biggeri A., Grillo P., Consonni D., Bertazzi P.A. Health impact assessment of fine particle pollution at the regional level. Am. J. Epidemiol. 2011;174:1396–1405. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwr256. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bahrami Asl F., Leili M., Vaziri Y., Salahshour Arian S., Cristaldi A., Oliveri Conti G., Ferrante M. Health impacts quantification of ambient air pollutants using AirQ model approach in Hamadan, Iran. Environ. Res. 2018;161:114–121. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2017.10.050. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bashir M.F., Ma B.J., Bilal Komal B., Bashir M.A., Farooq T.H., Iqbal N., Bashir M. Correlation between environmental pollution indicators and COVID-19 pandemic: a brief study in Californian context. Environ. Res. 2020;187:109652. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2020.109652. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types