Air pollution improved during China’s lockdowns – and it may have reduced hospital visits
- Lower levels of harmful PM2.5 particles could have resulted in an estimated 5,000 fewer hospital admissions from late January to February, study finds
- Researchers also estimate there were 60,000 fewer respiratory illnesses like asthma attacks in the period
Reduced levels of the tiny hazardous particles known as PM2.5 were likely to have resulted in an estimated 5,000 fewer hospital admissions and 60,000 fewer respiratory illnesses, like asthma attacks, from late January through February, according to a team of researchers from China, the US, Japan and the Netherlands.
In China, which has aimed to improve its notoriously poor air quality in recent years, the health burden is steep. Air pollution caused an estimated 1.24 million deaths there in 2017, according to an analysis for the University of Washington in Seattle’s Global Burden of Disease study published this year.
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“These results give us a window into what a cleaner world could look like – and the paths needed to achieve it,” said lead researcher Kazuyuki Miyazaki, a scientist in the Tropospheric Composition Group at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.