Effects of COVID-19 on the environment: An overview on air, water, wastewater, and solid waste

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the world hardly as of the beginning of 2020 and quickly spread worldwide from its first-reported point in early Dec. 2019. By mid-March 2021, the COVID-19 almost hit all countries worldwide, with about 122 and 2.7 million confirmed cases and deaths, respectively. As a strong measure to stop the infection spread and deaths, many countries have enforced quarantine and lockdown of many activities. The shutdown of these activities has resulted in large economic losses. However, it has been widely reported that these measures have resulted in improved air quality, more specifically in highly polluted areas characterized by massive population and industrial activities. The reduced levels of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and particulate matter emissions have been reported and confirmed worldwide in association with lockdown periods. On the other hand, ozone levels in ambient air have been found to increase, mainly in response to the reduced nitrogen emissions. In addition, improved water quality in natural water resources has been reported as well. Wastewater facilities have reported a higher level of organic load with persistent chemicals due to the increased use of sanitizers, disinfectants, and antibiotics. The solid waste generated due to the COVID-19 pandemic was found to increase both qualitatively and quantitatively. This work presents and summarizes the observed environmental effects of COVID-19 as reported in the literature for different countries worldwide. The work provides a distinct overview considering the effects imposed by COVID-19 on the air, water, wastewater, and solid waste as critical elements of the environment.

Keywords: Air quality; COVID-19; Carbon emissions; Environment; Pollution; Solid waste; Wastewater; Water resources.

Graphical abstract

Fig. 1

(a) Global greenhouse gaseous emissions, (b) CO₂ emissions for different sectors.

Fig. 2

The components measure by the TROPOMI at the respective wavelengths (Veefkind et al., 2012).

Fig. 3

Map of East Asia, showing the tropospheric column density of carbon monoxide (CO) and formaldehyde (HCHO) averaged in February 2019 and February 2020 (Ghahremanloo et al., 2021).

Fig. 4

Map of (a) East Asia (Ghahremanloo et al., 2021), (b) India (Lokhandwala and Gautam, 2020), and (c) Ecuador (Pacheco et al., 2020) showing the tropospheric column density of NO₂.

Fig. 5

Map of East Asia showing the tropospheric column density of SO₂ averaged in February 2019 and February 2020 (Ghahremanloo et al., 2021).

Fig. 6

The relative changes in a) air quality index, b) NO₂, c) O₃ in Guangxi region, China over different lockdown and quarantine periods relative to the average of 2016–2019 of the same period (Fu et al., 2020).

Fig. 7

Map of India showing the tropospheric column density of particulate matter PM _2.5 (Top), and PM₁₀ (bottom) (Lokhandwala and Gautam, 2020).

Fig. 8

Map of Western Europe showing the tropospheric column density of major air pollutants (Menut et al., 2020).

Fig. 9

Map of (a) Vembanad Lake, India (Yunus et al., 2020), and (b) Bokhalef River, Morocco discharge mouth (Cherif et al., 2020) demonstrating the increased water quality.

Fig. 10

Potential route for the spread of SARS-CoV-2 through wastewater (Adelodun et al., 2020).