Impact of COVID-19 restrictive precautions on air quality: case of Zonguldak, Turkey

Rabia Köklü, Burçin Atılgan Türkmen, Ece Ümmü Deveci and Çağdaş Gönen

International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management, 2022, vol. 25, issue 5, 406-426

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate and assess how restrictive COVID-19 precautions affect air quality in Zonguldak, as well as to determine the relationship between air quality and meteorological variables under these conditions. Daily PM2.5, PM10, SO₂, and NO_x concentrations and meteorological data, from 1 March to 31 May 2018, 2019, and 2020 were collected for this research. During the 2020 restrictive COVID-19 precautions, it was determined that concentrations of air pollutants were different and low based on the 95% confidence interval by using paired t-test samples. Meteorological variables were found to be similar to previous years, and the correlation between them and air pollutants was found to be significant (P < 0.01) but low according to Pearson correlations. As a result, meteorological variables were determined to have no direct effect on the low concentrations of air quality emissions during the 2020 pandemic. The overall findings revealed that anthropogenic impact has a negative impact on air quality and the air quality had improved during the COVID pandemic. Furthermore, the restriction on the region's coalmines during the COVID-19 pandemic has significant impact on the improvement of air quality.

Keywords: COVID-19; pandemic; air quality; PM10; PM2.5; NO x; SO 2; Zonguldak; Turkey. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=125532 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijetma:v:25:y:2022:i:5:p:406-426

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().