Air Pollution May Increase the Risk of Severe COVID-19

This study enforces the idea that air pollution is pervasive and a silent killer.” The study was observational and therefore unable to establish a cause-and-effect relationship. But air pollution could make people more vulnerable to COVID-19 in a number of ways, the researchers hypothesize. For instance, air pollution might increase people’s viral loads by limiting the lungs’ immune responses and anti-microbial activities, the study authors say. It may also increase chronic inflammation in the body and trigger the over-expression of a key enzyme receptor that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter cells. Since the start of the pandemic, evidence has mounted to show that air pollution makes COVID-19 worse, says Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics, population, and data science at Harvard University, who was not involved in the current study but was one of the first researchers to identify a relationship between pollution and COVID-19. Dominici, who is currently working on a review of the literature, said that she’s identified about 150 papers from around the world showing that exposure to air pollution drives more infections and more severe illness. Air pollution does not pose an equal threat to everyone, however. In North America, studies have repeatedly shown that people with lower socio-economic statuses and people of color are more likely to be exposed to air pollution—and suffer worse health outcomes from it—than white people and those wi...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news