Covid-19 is causing the most disruptive effect on lifestyle seen in the 21st century. The news on global climate change didn’t prompt people to change habits. The international economic crises of the late 2000s didn’t prompt people to change habits. But a direct threat on individuals by a tiny pathogen has prompted people to change habits.
As a consequence of necessary quarantines, self-imposed cautionary measures, health experts prompted social distance, and government mandated travel restrictions, Mother Earth and all its creatures, including us humans, are getting an unexpected break. This break comes in the form of cleaner air.
Satellites operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, orbiting the planet to monitor air quality, picked up a remarkable change: a substantial drop in the concentration of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution compared to average levels of pollution. The decline is particularly prevalent over China and northern Italy. Nitrogen dioxide is a harmful chemical emitted by gas vehicles, gas motors, power plants, and any machine that burns fossil fuels.
In China, the impact is so stark, it could be presented as a before and after makeover. The image below shows, from NASA, shows the concentration (density) of nitrogen dioxide in China before and after Covid-19 quarantines went into effect. NASA announced this finding with this headline: Airborne Nitrogen Dioxide Plummets Over China.
In northern Italy, a video produced by ESA (the European Space Agency) shows the steady decrease in emissions of nitrogen dioxide over Italy during the last month. Italy had its first reported case of Covid-19 in mid-February and since then a steady slow down of movement, until the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti ordered a lockdown of northern Italy on March 8.
The slowdown of activity, which includes power plants and industrial facilities ramping down, has resulted in a drop of air pollution levels tallied so far to be near 30%. Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said to NPR that he has “spoken to people in Shanghai who said that it’s been some of the most pristine blue skies that they remember over the winter.”
Mr. Myllyvirta has worked on the first study to quantify the burden that air pollution from fossil fuels inflicts globally. The cost is about US$8 billion every day, amounting to over 3% of global GDP. Myllyvirta explains that this “far exceeds the cost of transitioning to clean energy.”
In terms of health, epidemiologists explain that it would be a misrepresentation to describe air pollution reductions as a benefit from coronavirus. In the short term, individuals, especially for those with underlying conditions, are at greater risk from the virus than from pollution.
However, this sizable impact should get us all thinking about the long term effects, after the virus has subsided and/or effective treatment and prevention developed (which are being pursued aggressively by companies like Regeneron, and research centers like Sunnybroook.)
In his interview with NPR, Myllyvirta pointed out that after the global financial crisis, which did have a temporary effect on emissions, governments rolled out “the biggest stimulus package in the history of mankind”. This drove global emissions up for years, worsening an already fragile situation for nature.
Hopefully, as a species, we can learn from this and reduce air pollution permanently. At the human level, we need the reduction because air pollution is a serious risk to health. Fine particles from pollution enter the bloodstream through the lungs and cause asthma, heart attacks, respiratory problems, cancer, and neurological disorders such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease. The World Health Organization estimates that almost 5 million people die each year from causes directly related to air pollution. At the broader level of nature and all of its creatures, we need the reduction because if we have evidence of these terrible effects on us, how can we think we are not affecting the flora and fauna of the world?
Once the coronavirus crisis is over, what can we do go about our lives in better more responsible and joyous ways than before?
