The World Health Organization says dirty air, both indoors and out, cuts short seven million lives annually. That includes more than 100,000 Americans.
Now there’s a study from researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health indicating that higher levels of the tiny, dangerous particles in air known as PM 2.5 are associated with higher death rates from Covid-19.
U.S. counties that averaged just one microgram per cubic meter more PM 2.5 in the air, the researchers found, had a covid-19 death rate that was 15 percent higher, based on data from 3,080 counties covering 98 percent of the nation’s population.
Specifically, the researchers found that if Manhattan had lowered its average PM 2.5 level by just a single unit, or one microgram per cubic meter, over the past 20 years, there would have been 248 fewer Covid-19 deaths in the period ending April 7. “The results of this paper suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe Covid-19 outcomes,” the authors wrote.
“If you’re getting COVID, and you have been breathing polluted air, it’s really putting gasoline on a fire,” said Francesca Dominici, a Harvard biostatistics professor and the study’s senior author.
Most fine particulate matter comes from fuel combustion in automobiles, refineries and power plants. Some is from indoor sources like tobacco smoke. The fine particles penetrate deep into the body, promoting hypertension, heart disease, breathing trouble, and diabetes, all of which increase complications in coronavirus patients. The particles also weaken the immune system and fuel inflammation in the lungs and respiratory tract, adding to the risk both of getting Covid-19 and of having severe symptoms.
In 2003, Dr. Zuo-Feng Zhang, the associate dean for research at the University of California, Los Angeles, Fielding School of Public Health, found that SARS patients in the most polluted parts of China were twice as likely to die from the disease as those in places with low air pollution.
Beth Gardiner, a journalist and the author of Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution, said she was particularly worried about what the coronavirus outbreak would mean for countries with far worse pollution, such as India. “Most countries don’t take it seriously enough and aren’t doing enough given the scale of the harm that air pollution is doing to all of our health,” she said.
Sadly, the United States is proposing to ignore scientists’ strong recommendations that clean air standards be raised. The decision by EPA to stand pat drew a critical letter from 18 U.S. senators that cited the Harvard study. “What should be painfully obvious to all of us right now is that the cost of protecting public health is far less than the cost of breathing polluted air,” said U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and one of the signers of the April 14 letter. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler defended the decision and noted that the Harvard study had yet to be peer reviewed.
The world’s experience with Covid-19 has illustrated the importance of fostering public acceptance of science and a willingness to listen to scientific expertise. We also need to pay heed to scientists warning us about climate change. "Every disaster movie starts with a scientist being ignored," Texas Tech University’s Katharine Hayhoe said during a recent webinar organized by Harvard University and the American Public Health Association.
The fastest, most efficient way to reduce air pollution is to put an honest price on fossil fuel emissions--a price that takes into account the significant costs imposed on all of us when breathing those emissions causes poor health and death. It’s time for Congress to start moving on a carbon fee.