Hello everyone, we hope you are doing well in the current crazy times. As we are all going through this pandemic, we had gone through stay home quarantines and bans on travelling. Many people would now be staying home and minimise the use of transportations which would have greatly decreased the air pollution produced since there will be few cars driving around and other more pollutive transportation like aeroplanes were also suspended (Venter, Aunan, Chowdhury & Lelieveld, 2020). In today’s blog, we will look into the current world we are in and draw connections to the changes in the pollution in our environment. Today’s entry is a general view on COVID19 and pollution, and in our future post, we will discuss in details about the relation of COVID19 with pollution from the fashion industry specifically.
Beth Gardiner (2020) from National Geography has published an article to discuss precisely the trend mentioned above. As seen in Figure 1, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution has decreased in 2020 in comparison with 2019 between January and March. Figure 1 has shown us the reduction in NO2 pollution when people stay home to prevent the spread of COVID19. However, when we look at Ukraine, the NO2 pollution increased when comparing 2020’s date to 2019, which could be due to Ukraine having few cases then and their quarantine to contain COVID19 only started in March (OECD, 2020) which Figure 1 did not manage to capture the change in the NO2 pollution. Focusing on countries who had decreased NO2 pollution such as China, we have to understand that quarantine has drastically reduced pollution from transportations. From here, we start to realise the pollution produced from people who drive and even from people that takes any form of transportation.
Figure 1, Comparing NO2 pollution between January and March in 2020 and 2019. (Source: Gardiner, 2020)
Such a drastic reduction in air pollution is important as Gardiner (2020) mentioned how skies are clearer and people have increased their visibility in their area. She also pointed out that the quality of air also increased the damage done when contracting COVID19. Poor quality air meant that there will be more PM2.5 particles present in the air, and having such minute particles will contribute to respiratory symptoms which can make COVID19 more severe (“Urban air pollution may make COVID-19 more severe for some”, 2020). It is, thus, important to realise the knock-on impacts of air pollution on our daily lives and seek to actively reduce the air pollution that we create.
If we are only using one particular aspect of air pollution which is transportation, we realise the potential of actually improving our air quality. We have to reflect and take this pandemic as a chance to probably change our habits and look into why and where was the greatest pollution in terms of transportations and elsewhere. Perhaps from here, we can look into ways to reduce air pollution caused by our activities and seek ways to maintain the low levels of pollution during the quarantine period of COVID19.
References:
Gardiner, B. (2020). Pollution made COVID-19 worse. Now, lockdowns are clearing the air. Retrieved 27 September 2020, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/pollution-made-the-pandemic-worse-but-lockdowns-clean-the-sky/
OECD. (2020). Retrieved 27 September 2020, from https://www.oecd.org/eurasia/competitiveness-programme/eastern-partners/COVID-19-CRISIS-IN-UKRAINE.pdf
Urban air pollution may make COVID-19 more severe for some. (2020). Retrieved 27 September 2020, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201007182336.htm
Venter, Z., Aunan, K., Chowdhury, S., & Lelieveld, J. (2020). COVID-19 lockdowns cause global air pollution declines. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, 117(32), 18984-18990. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2006853117
