Possible Link Between Air Pollution and COVID-19 Mortality

The course of COVID-19 differs for patients the world over. Many experience mild flu-like symptoms, while others are hospitalized with acute respiratory infections that can lead to death. What factors affect the course of the disease remain unclear.

In northern Italy, the mortality rate is 12%, while it is around 4.5% in the rest of the country. In a study published Saturday in Environmental Pollution, Aarhus University researchers demonstrate a probable correlation between air pollution and mortality in two of the worst affected regions in northern Italy (and throughout Europe): Lombardy and Emilia Romagna.

The researchers compared data acquired from the NASA Aura satellite with the so-called Air Quality Index—a measurement of air quality developed by the European Environment Agency. The index gathers data from several thousand measuring stations all over Europe, providing a geographical insight into the prevalence of a number of pollutant sources in the EU.

The figures speak for themselves. The population of the northern Italian regions lives in a higher level of air pollution, and this may lead to a number of complications for patients with COVID-19 in the regions, simply because their bodies may have already been weakened by the accumulated exposure to air pollution when they contract the disease.

Dario Caro explains that the situation in the Italian regions has been a challenge for several years, with high levels of air pollution that have accumulated over a long period of time in the population. It is therefore unlikely that there is any reason to imagine that people in Denmark are exposed to the same factors or the same levels of pollution as people in northern Italy, where the authorities have been trying to reduce pollution levels for many years.

“All over the world, we’re seeing different approaches from countries’ authorities, in countries’ general public health outset, and in the standards and readiness of different countries’ national healthcare systems,” says senior author Dario Caro. “But this doesn’t explain the prevalence and mortality rates that we’re seeing in northern Italy compared with the rest of Italy. This feeds hope that we may have found yet another factor in understanding the high mortality rate of the disease in northern Italy.”