By: Ellie Blixt
At the end of December 2019, a contagious respiratory illness was reported in Wuhan, China. For the first few weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) had doubts that the roots of the illness (pneumonia-like cases) stemmed from a new coronavirus.[1] As early as January 21st, 2020, the novel coronavirus had been identified as the mysterious contagious respiratory illness originating in Wuhan and had made its way into the United States when a Washington state resident became the first person in America to be confirmed to have it.[2] On January 31st, 2020, the WHO declared a public health emergency.[3] Shortly thereafter, on February 3rd, 2020, the Trump administration declared a public health emergency in the United States due to the coronavirus outbreak.[4] By March 11th, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 reached the status of being a pandemic. During that announcement, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, said at a briefing in Geneva that the agency is “deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity” of the outbreak.[5] In the beginning stages of the pandemic, major governmental players and organizations such as the WHO were primarily concerned with restricting global travel and completing contact tracing with individuals who tested positive for the novel coronavirus.[6] As the virus continued to spread at an alarming rate, government officials and officials from around the world began to construct more restrictions and protocols in an effort to stop the spread.[7]
The most drastic restriction to be created in response to the novel coronavirus was the stay-at-home orders that numerous governors put in place in several states around mid-March of last year. The goal of these orders was to limit residents from traveling except to go to an essential job or to shop for their essential needs (food, medications, etc.).[8] Although the intention of the stay-at-home orders was to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus, the orders ended up having a secondary benefit in that air pollution worldwide significantly decreased.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the reductions in Earth’s atmospheric air pollutants have been observable from both space and the ground.[9] Scientists wanted to know how much of the decline was attributable to changes in human activity during the stay-at-home orders compared to how much air pollution would have occurred if a pandemic did not occur in 2020.[10] NASA researchers utilized computer models to generate COVID-free 2020 pollution statistics.[11] Their research showed that since February, the restrictions that emerged in response to the pandemic have reduced global nitrogen dioxide concentrations by nearly 20%.[12] Nitrogen dioxide is an air pollutant that is primarily produced by the combustion of fossil fuels used by industry and transportation—both of which were significantly reduced during the height of the pandemic in an effort to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus.[13] Wuhan, China, was the first municipality to report an outbreak of COVID-19. It was also the first place to show a reduction in nitrogen dioxide emissions—60% lower than simulated values of the NASA computer-generated model expected for 2020. A 60% decrease in Milan and a 45% decrease in New York followed shortly, as their local restrictions went into effect.[14] The European Environmental Agency (EEA) predicted that, because of the COVID-19 lockdown, nitrogen dioxide emissions dropped from 30-60% in many European cities, including Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, Rome, and Paris.[15] It is assumed that vehicles and aviation are vital contributors to emissions and contribute almost 72% and 11% of the transport sector’s greenhouse gas emissions, respectively.[16] “We all knew the lockdowns were going to have an impact on air quality,” said lead author Christoph Keller with Universities Space Research Association (USRA) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; however, in some ways, Keller was “surprised by how much it dropped,” because “many countries have already done a very good job in lowering their nitrogen dioxide concentrations over the last decades due to clean air regulations, but what our results clearly show is that there is still a significant human behavior-driven contribution.”[17]
Additionally, when the pandemic hit and city streets became eerily quiet seemingly overnight, chemists from around the world began collaborating to analyze how carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were altered as the responses to COVID-19 were underway.[18] In New Zealand, where stringent movement restrictions bolstered the country’s effective containment of COVID-19, traffic volume fell by about 80% during the height of the lockdown, according to Jocelyn Turnbull, a radiocarbon scientist at geological research company GNS Science.[19] During the first six weeks that the orders were in place in the United States, traffic was down by about 45%. Data from the Berkeley Environmental Air-quality and CO2 Network (BEACON) showed that total carbon dioxide emissions fell by about a quarter during that period compared with the previous six weeks.[20]
All in all, the COVID-19 commute has helped mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus and helped to reduce the number of air pollutants in our atmosphere. Moving forward, leaders of countries around the world should aim to increase economic activity and slowly re-open the world (in a safe manner) while also making a valiant effort to reduce the use of transportation. I believe the work from home era is here to stay in some capacity—as this pandemic has shown us how much work is able to be achieved within the walls of our homes—and additionally has proven to businesses how much money they could be saving if they either downsize their offices or close them all together and continue to work remote.
[1] AJMC Staff, A Timeline of COVID-19 Developments in 2020, AJMC, https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020 (Jan. 1, 2021).
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] WHO Director-General’s Opening Remarks at the Media Briefing on COVID-19 – 11 March 2020, Who.int, https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—11-march-2020 (Mar. 11, 2020).
[6] AJMC Staff, A Timeline of COVID-19 Developments in 2020, AJMC, https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020 (Jan. 1, 2021).
[7] Timing of State and Territorial COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders and Changes in Population Movement–United States, March 1, May 31, 2020, CDC, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6935a2.htm (2020).
[8] Id.
[9] Model Shows Extent COVID-related Pollution Levels Deviated from Norm, NASA, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-model-reveals-how-much-covid-related-pollution-levels-deviated-from-the-norm (2020).
[10] Model Shows Extent COVID-related Pollution Levels Deviated from Norm, NASA, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-model-reveals-how-much-covid-related-pollution-levels-deviated-from-the-norm (Nov. 17, 2020).
[11] Id.
[12] Id.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.
[15] Air pollution goes down as Europe takes hard measures to combat coronavirus, European Environment Agency (2020), https://www.eea.europa.eu/highlights/air-pollution-goes-down-as (last visited Apr 24, 2021).
[16] Tanjena Rume & S.M. Didar-Ul Islam, Environmental effects of COVID-19 pandemic and potential strategies of sustainability Heliyon, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7498239/#:~:text=The%20global%20
disruption%20caused%20by,parts%20of%20the%20world.
[17] Id.
[18] Cen.acs.org, https://cen.acs.org/environment/atmospheric-chemistry/COVID-19-lockdowns-had-strange-effects-on-air-pollution-across-the-globe/98/i37 (Sept. 25, 2020).
[19] Id.
[20] Id.