The association of wildfire air pollution with COVID-19 incidence in New South Wales, Australia.

J Cortes-Ramirez, R N Michael, L D Knibbs, H Bambrick, M R Haswell, D Wraith

Open access · hybridAbstract read

In one paragraph

Article in The Science of the total environment, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it

0cells of the map it votes in

8citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it

2.8field-weighted citation impact, top 9% of its field

1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 29 citations in OpenAlex.

Particulate matter air pollution and COVID-19 infection, severity, and mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis.The Science of the total environment · 2023
Pooled it
The Covid-19 hospitalization risk associated with air pollution in New York state counties after the 2023 Quebec wildfires.Journal of public health research · 2025
Article
Wildfire-Related Air Pollution and Infectious Diseases: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.ACS environmental Au · 2025
Review
Spatiotemporal hierarchical Bayesian analysis to identify factors associated with COVID-19 in suburban areas in Colombia.Heliyon · 2024
Article
Mapping the risk of respiratory infections using suburban district areas in a large city in Colombia.BMC public health · 2023
Article
The COVID-19-wildfire smoke paradox: Reduced risk of all-cause mortality due to wildfire smoke in Colorado during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.Environmental research · 2023
Article
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and Particulate Matter Exposure: A Systematic Review.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023
Review
Do wildfires exacerbate COVID-19 infections and deaths in vulnerable communities? Evidence from California.Journal of environmental management · 2023
Article

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.

J Cortes-RamirezSchool of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Australia; Centre for Data Science, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Electronic address: javier.cortesramirez@qut.edu.au.

R N MichaelSchool of Engineering and Built Environment, Griffith University, Australia; Cities Research Institute, Griffith University, Australia.

L D KnibbsSchool of Public Health, The University of Sydney, Australia.

H BambrickSchool of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

M R HaswellSchool of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Australia; Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Indigenous Strategy and Services), The University of Sydney, Australia; School of Geosciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Sydney, Australia.

D WraithSchool of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

Queensland University of Technology · AUGriffith University · AUUniversity of Sydney · AU

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The 2020 COVID-19 outbreak in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, followed an unprecedented wildfire season that exposed large populations to wildfire smoke. Wildfires release particulate matter (PM), toxic gases and organic and non-organic chemicals that may be associated with increased incidence of COVID-19. This study estimated the association of wildfire smoke exposure with the incidence of COVID-19 in NSW. A Bayesian mixed-effect regression was used to estimate the association of either the average PM

Indexed as

Air PollutantsAir PollutionCOVID-19WildfiresAustraliaBayes TheoremEnvironmental ExposureHumansIncidenceNew South WalesParticulate MatterSARS-CoV-2SmokeSociodemographic FactorsAir PollutantsParticulate MatterSmokeAltered immune responseAustralian bushfire seasonBayesian spatial regressionIntegrated nested Laplace approximation-INLAPopulation densityWildfire smoke indicators

Identifiers

PMID34695471

DOI10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.151158

PMCPMC8532327

OpenAlexW3208357610

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata

Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.