The Effects of Quarantine and COVID-19 on Air Pollution
- Brianna Sweyd
- Mar 14, 2021
- 2 min read
Swans and dolphins have returned to the Italian ports and canals. This happened after the lockdown early this year. Boat traffic in these areas cleared up, animals returned, and it was quite a beautiful sight to see swans swimming in these gorgeous canals. However, Italy’s water isn’t the only part of the environment that has seen improvements after lockdowns. As you may have seen from the chart circulating around Twitter, a series of images presents a visual idea of how much pollution has gone down in Wuhan China; which appears to be a lot after their lockdown occurred. This makes you wonder, “how has lockdown and COVID-19 affected other regions of the worlds’ air pollution rates?”. Recent sources evaluate this question and the worldwide lockdown’s short-term effects, as not enough time has passed to evaluate long-term effects on the environment.
One source, written by Michael S. Diamond and Robert Wood, evaluates the changes in different types of pollution, such as aerosol, cloud droplets, and nitrogen oxide. Diamond and Wood state that: “Satellite measurements show that levels of nitrogen oxides, gases that are a major component of air pollution, were substantially lower than what we would normally expect for February.” (Diamond, Wood). This shows that there is a decline in these levels, which as we can see, is because of stay-at-home orders and travel bans. “Transportation is a major source of nitrogen oxides but not of airborne particles or their chemical precursors, which are mostly emitted by industry and power plants” (Diamond, Wood). This quote connects the idea of the nitrogen oxide pollution levels decreasing to restrictions put in place to prevent the rapid spread of COVID-19. Despite the decrease in nitrogen oxide, according to Diamond and Wood, other chemicals polluting the earth’s atmosphere have not had as significant of changes. This is shown in the quote, “however, we did not observe any similar changes in airborne particles (another major component of air pollution) or in the size of cloud droplets (which is partly determined by the abundance of airborne particles). This is important because airborne particles, in addition to harming human health, affect the climate by changing how much sunlight is absorbed on Earth versus reflected back into space.” (Diamond, Wood). Here, Diamond and Wood explain why focusing on trying to eliminate, or significantly decrease, these particles, as they not only affect our atmosphere, they harm our health. While certain pollutant chemical rates have gone down, many still remain around the same levels, so while there is some progress, there is still a long way to go to help the environment recover from centuries of damage.
Works Cited
Diamond, Michael S., and Robert Wood. "Limited regional aerosol and cloud microphysical changes despite unprecedented decline in nitrogen oxide pollution during the February 2020 COVID‐19 shutdown in China." Geophysical research letters 47.17 (2020): e2020GL088913.
About the Contributor
Staff Writer, Jena Woodmansee
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