{"id":803,"date":"2020-03-30T14:50:25","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T14:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intv.pk\/covid-19-lockdowns-give-europes-cities-cleaner-air\/"},"modified":"2020-03-30T14:50:25","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T14:50:25","slug":"covid-19-lockdowns-give-europes-cities-cleaner-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/?p=803","title":{"rendered":"
COVID-19: Lockdowns give Europe’s cities cleaner air<\/div>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Coronavirus<\/div>\n
Air pollution has decreased in urban areas across Europe during lockdowns to combat the coronavirus, new satellite images showed on Monday, but campaigners warned city-dwellers were still more vulnerable to the epidemic.<\/div>\n
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Cities including Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Milan and Frankfurt showed a reduction in average levels of noxious nitrogen dioxide over March 5-25, compared with the same period last year, according to the Sentinel-5 satellite images.<\/p>\n

That coincides with lockdowns in many European countries which have curbed road transport – the largest source of nitrogen oxides – and slowed output at gas-emitting factories.<\/p>\n

The new images, released by the European Space Agency (ESA) and analyzed by the non-profit European Public Health Alliance (EPHA), show the changing density of nitrogen dioxide, which can cause respiratory problems and cancer, like heat maps.<\/p>\n

Daily weather events can influence atmospheric pollution, so the satellite pictures took a 20-day average and excluded readings where cloud cover reduced the quality of the data.<\/p>\n

Data from the European Environment Agency (EEA) showed a similar trend over March 16-22. In Madrid, average nitrogen dioxide levels decreased by 56% week-on-week after the Spanish government banned non-essential travel on March 14.<\/p>\n

The EPHA said people living in polluted cities may be more at risk from COVID-19, because prolonged exposure to bad air can weaken the immune system, making it harder to fight infection.<\/p>\n

“That connection is very likely,” Zoltan Massay-Kosubek, policy manager for clean air at EPHA, told Reuters. “But because the disease is new, it still has to be demonstrated.”<\/p>\n

Air pollution can cause or exacerbate lung cancer, pulmonary disease and strokes.<\/p>\n

China also recorded a drop in nitrogen dioxide pollution in cities during February, when the government imposed draconian lockdown measures to contain the raging epidemic.<\/p>\n

In some regions of Poland, however, nitrogen dioxide levels remained relatively high during the period despite its lockdown, perhaps due to the prevalence of coal-based heating.<\/p>\n

Countries that went into lockdown later – such as Britain, which did so on March 23 – look set for a pollution reprieve in coming weeks, EPHA said.<\/p>\n

Air pollution causes around 400,000 premature deaths each year in Europe, EEA data show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Air pollution has decreased in urban areas across Europe during lockdowns to combat the coronavirus, new satellite images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":804,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category----3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}