Feature
The Pollution Pandemic - Lessons from In this year’s December Magazine, Editor Pippa Neill reflects on what the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us about air pollution.
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hen the UK entered the very first national lockdown on 24 March 2020, Air Quality News was one of the first media outlets to report on the sudden change in air pollution. After analysing data from the Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), we found that on the first day of lockdown air pollution had halved in some cities. The biggest decrease was seen in Edinburgh where nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations fell from 74µg/ m3 in 2019, to 28µg/m3 in 2020. With the roads empty and the public breathing in clean air for the
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first time in a generation, the wider media soon picked up on these changes. Videos of dolphins in the canals of Venice and memes stating that ‘nature is healing’ went viral on social media. We all saw first-hand the clear connection between our own activities and pollution. These changes didn’t just have a visual impact, but according to research published in June 2020 by the British Lung Foundation, during the first lockdown two million people with respiratory conditions such as asthma experienced reduced symptoms. However, halting the economy for the sake of the environment is never going to be a viable solution and
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soon our air pollution levels returned to ‘normal.’ By July 2020, with the majority of the restrictions over, air pollution levels had more or less returned to pre-pandemic levels. Health outcomes The sudden change in our environment wasn’t the only way that air pollution came to the forefront of our conversations. As researchers learned more about the virus, they quickly realised that exposure to air pollution may actually be connected to covid outcomes. Historically, air pollution has largely been associated with ‘non-
