Air Quality Variation in Wuhan, Daegu, and Tokyo during the Explosive Outbreak of COVID-19 and Its Health Effects

Chang-Jin Ma and Gong-Unn Kang
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Chang-Jin Ma: Department of Environmental Science, Fukuoka Women’s University, Fukuoka 813-8529, Japan
Gong-Unn Kang: Department of Medical Administration, Wonkwang Health Science University, Iksan 54538, Korea

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 11, 1-12

Abstract: This study was designed to assess the variation of the air quality actually measured from the air pollution monitoring stations (AQMS) in three cities (Wuhan, Daegu, and Tokyo), in Asian countries experiencing the explosive outbreak of COVID-19, in a short period of time. In addition, we made a new attempt to calculate the reduced Dose PM 2.5 (μg) at the bronchiolar (Br.) and alveolar-interstitial (AI) regions of the 10-year-old children after the city lockdown/self-reflection of each city. A comparison of the average PM 2.5 of a month before and after the lockdown (Wuhan) and self-reflection (Daegu and Tokyo) clearly shows that the PM 2.5 concentration was decreased by 29.9, 20.9, and 3.6% in Wuhan, Daegu and Tokyo, respectively. Wuhan, Daegu and Tokyo also recorded 53.2, 19.0, and 10.4% falls of NO 2 concentration, respectively. Wuhan, which had the largest decrease of PM 2.5 concentration due to COVID-19, also marked the largest reduced Dose PM 2.5 10-year-old children (μg) (3660 μg at Br. and 6222 μg at AI), followed by Daegu (445 μg at Br. and 1287 μg at AI), and Tokyo (18 μg at Br. and 52 μg at AI), over two months after the city lockdown/self-reflection. Our results suggest that the city lockdown/self-reflection had the effect of lowering the concentration of PM 2.5 , resulting in an extension of the period it took to the acute allergic airway inflammation (AAI) for the 10-year-old children.

Keywords: PM 2.5; NO 2; COVID-19; health effect; exposure dose; Wuhan; Daegu; Tokyo (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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