Geospatial Correlation Analysis between Air Pollution Indicators and Estimated Speed of COVID-19 Diffusion in the Lombardy Region (Italy)

Lorenzo Gianquintieri, Maria Antonia Brovelli, Andrea Pagliosa, Rodolfo Bonora, Giuseppe Maria Sechi and Enrico Gianluca Caiani
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Lorenzo Gianquintieri: Electronics, Information and Biomedical Engineering Department, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy
Maria Antonia Brovelli: Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy
Andrea Pagliosa: Agenzia Regionale Emergenza Urgenza (AREU), 20124 Milano, Italy
Rodolfo Bonora: Agenzia Regionale Emergenza Urgenza (AREU), 20124 Milano, Italy
Giuseppe Maria Sechi: Agenzia Regionale Emergenza Urgenza (AREU), 20124 Milano, Italy
Enrico Gianluca Caiani: Electronics, Information and Biomedical Engineering Department, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 22, 1-18

Abstract: Background: the Lombardy region in Italy was the first area in Europe to record an outbreak of COVID-19 and one of the most affected worldwide. As this territory is strongly polluted, it was hypothesized that pollution had a role in facilitating the diffusion of the epidemic, but results are uncertain. Aim: the paper explores the effect of air pollutants in the first spread of COVID-19 in Lombardy, with a novel geomatics approach addressing the possible confounding factors, the reliability of data, the measurement of diffusion speed, and the biasing effect of the lockdown measures. Methods and results: all municipalities were assigned to one of five possible territorial classes (TC) according to land-use and socio-economic status, and they were grouped into districts of 100,000 residents. For each district, the speed of COVID-19 diffusion was estimated from the ambulance dispatches and related to indicators of mean concentration of air pollutants over 1, 6, and 12 months, grouping districts in the same TC. Significant exponential correlations were found for ammonia (NH 3 ) in both prevalently agricultural (R 2 = 0.565) and mildly urbanized (R 2 = 0.688) areas. Conclusions: this is the first study relating COVID-19 estimated speed of diffusion with indicators of exposure to NH 3 . As NH 3 could induce oxidative stress, its role in creating a pre-existing fragility that could have facilitated SARS-CoV-2 replication and worsening of patient conditions could be speculated.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; pollution; health geomatics; emergency medical services; correlation analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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