ArticleThe Science of the total environment2021
Associations between mortality from COVID-19 in two Italian regions and outdoor air pollution as assessed through tropospheric nitrogen dioxide.
Article in The Science of the total environment, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed.
- Consideration of Cardiovascular Morbidities in the Relationship between Ambient Air Pollution Exposure and Individual-Level Adverse COVID-19 Outcomes: A Systematic Review.Current epidemiology reports · 2025Article
- REACH-OUT: Race, Ethnicity, and Air Pollution in COVID-19 Hospitalization OUTcomes.Research report (Health Effects Institute) · 2025Article
- Linking Pollution and Viral Risk: Detection of Dioxins and Coronaviruses in Cats and Dogs.Viruses · 2025Article
- The relationship between chronic air pollution exposure, neighborhood environmental vulnerability, and adverse COVID-19 morbidities among hospitalized New York City residents.Environment international · 2025Article
- Dynamic and static analysis of environmental variables in coronavirus spread.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Epidemiological characteristics of RSV in pediatric inpatients with lower respiratory tract infections in Suzhou and their correlation with meteorology and atmospheric pollutants.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Canine coronavirus infection is intensified by 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin.Archives of toxicology · 2025Article
- The Effects of Environmental Factors on General Human Health: A Scoping Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Relationship between COVID-19 Cases and Environmental Contaminants in Quito, Ecuador.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Review
- Impact of short-term ambient air pollution exposure on the risk of severe COVID-19.Journal of environmental sciences (China) · 2024Article
- Evolving patterns of COVID-19 mortality in US counties: A longitudinal study of healthcare, socioeconomic, and vaccination associations.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
- Factors Associated with SARS-CoV-2 Infection Evaluated by Antibody Response in a Sample of Workers from the Emilia-Romagna Region, Northern Italy.Antibodies (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- The influence of meteorological factors on COVID-19 spread in Italy during the first and second wave.Environmental research · 2023Article
- The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Socioeconomic Deprivation on Admissions to the Emergency Department for Psychiatric Illness: An Observational Study in a Province of Southern Italy.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- A Literature Review of the Effects of Air Pollution on COVID-19 Health Outcomes Worldwide: Statistical Challenges and Data Visualization.Annual review of public health · 2023Review
- Elucidating the role of environmental management of forests, air quality, solid waste and wastewater on the dissemination of SARS-CoV-2.Hygiene and environmental health advances · 2022Review
- A deep learning approach for Spatio-Temporal forecasting of new cases and new hospital admissions of COVID-19 spread in Reggio Emilia, Northern Italy.Journal of biomedical informatics · 2022Article
- NOHeliyon · 2022Article
- A review on the biological, epidemiological, and statistical relevance of COVID-19 paired with air pollution.Environmental advances · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
After the appearance of COVID-19 in China last December 2019, Italy was the first European country to be severely affected by the outbreak. The first diagnosis in Italy was on February 20, 2020, followed by the establishment of a light and a tight lockdown on February 23 and on March 8, 2020, respectively. The virus spread rapidly, particularly in the North of the country in the 'Padan Plain' area, known as one of the most polluted regions in Europe. Air pollution has been recently hypothesized to enhance the clinical severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection, acting through adverse effects on immunity, induction of respiratory and other chronic disease, upregulation of viral receptor ACE-2, and possible pathogen transportation as a virus carrier. We investigated the association between air pollution and subsequent COVID-19 mortality rates within two Italian regions (Veneto and Emilia-Romagna). We estimated ground-level nitrogen dioxide through its tropospheric levels using data available from the Sentinel-5P satellites of the European Space Agency Copernicus Earth Observation Programme before the lockdown. We then examined COVID-19 mortality rates in relation to the nitrogen dioxide levels at three 14-day lag points after the lockdown, namely March 8, 22 and April 5, 2020. Using a multivariable negative binomial regression model, we found an association between nitrogen dioxide and COVID-19 mortality. Although ecological data provide only weak evidence, these findings indicate an association between air pollution levels and COVID-19 severity.
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