About This Project

The relationship between air pollution exposure and spread of COVID-19 has revealed that poor air quality may favor COVID-19 transmissibility around the world (China, Netherlands, USA). In Italy, existing studies have just focused on some territories, and/or without considering other important structural concomitant factors, and the movements of people. This should allow unbiased results and lead to a better estimation of the quantitative impact of air pollutants.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

The spread of COVID-19 disease is a global threat that is heavily affecting the life of each person. The relationship between air pollution and COVID-19 spread in Italy seems to be positive and quite significant (1,2, 3, 4, 5). However, these studies have several limitations: i) they just focus on some regions/provinces; ii) they do not consider important covariates (such as demography, weather, habits of population, and infrastructures); iii) they do not consider the spatial dependency of COVID-19 incidence, i.e. the possibility that neighbouring territories may affect each other through the movement of people; iv) they do not consider other potentially dangerous pollutants, such as arsenic, nickel, benzene, benzopyrene, ozone, and cadmium.

What is the significance of this project?

I will consider all the italian territories in order to have a more comprehensive and consistent understanding of the phenomenon. In particular, I will include several co-factors, such as demographic, meteorological, and infrastructural variables. This should allow me to establish the contribution of these factors and that of long-term air pollution exposure on COVID-19 transmissibility and to identify the possible interaction between them.

This is a critical points because some structural factors may matter much more than air quality in spreading of COVID-19 infections. Moreover, some of them may also contribute to mitigate/exacerbate the adverse effect of air pollutants on COVID-19 transmissibility.

What are the goals of the project?

I want to assess the impact of the long-term concentrations of the following air pollutants on COVID-19 transmissibility: arsenic, benezene, benzoapyrene, cadmium, nitrogen dioxide, nickel, ozone, and particulate matter (10 and 2.5). The COVID-19 tranmissibility will be computed by considering the prevalence of infection in the population at the end of 2020.

First, I will collect the data about air pollutants using reports from main environmental national agency (ARPA, ISTAT, etc.), In particular, I will use the data from more than 300 fixed control units for air quality monitoring, spread in Italy.

I will control for demographic (age, population density, etc.), infrastructural (airport, firms, etc), and meteorological (altitude, temperature) features.