Saturday, March 28, 2020

Air pollution reduced due to COVID-19

Accumulating evidence suggests the level of air pollution was reduced significantly in these days.

It is no doubt that the outcome is thankful to corona virus pandemic followed by the lockdown in several cities such as London and New York.  But not only urban areas but also some rural areas were given clearer air recently. It may be partially because the fact that many factories are crippled due to shortage of workers.

Evening Express: Air pollution falls as UK goes into coronavirus lockdown

Air pollution is one of the biggest problems of environmental issues. Dirty sky is estimated to take 40,000 people's life in the UK. In this sense, it is more awful than COVID-19.

Researchers say the influence of cleaned sky will not be able to be calculated exactly because many people died by COVID-19. Many victims are elder so that they might be dead by other reasons even if not infected with COVID-19.

Nonetheless, this phenomenon tells us many things. First, air pollution is without doubt caused by human activity. Second, it is reversible, and the effect of stopping activities will be gained soon.

Some regions have started to restrict air polluting activities such as driving a car in city. It is possible that temporal suspension of industrial activity such as "no NO2 week" will be a political practice in the future after overcoming the pandemic.

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