Population Exposure to Particulate Matter and COVID-19: An Ecological Study for Health Promotion
Mohammad Sarmadi1, 2, #, *, Sajjad Rahimi1, 2, #, *, Maryam Feiz Arefi2, 3, Arash Aghabeigi4, Sama Yektay5, Daryoush Sanaei6
1 Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Health, Torbat Heydariyeh University of Medical Sciences, Torbat Heydariyeh, Iran
2 Health Sciences Research Center, Torbat Heydariyeh University of Medical Sciences, Torbat Heydariyeh, Iran
3 Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Health,Torbat heydariyeh University of Medical Sciences, Torbat heydariyeh, Iran
4 Department of Internal Medicine, 9 Dey Educational Hospital, Torbat Heydariyeh University of Medical Sciences, Torbat Heydariyeh, Iran
5 Student Research Committee, Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, Sabzevar, Iran
6 Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Shahid Beheshti University ofMedical Science, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Background:
Documentation of the association between ambient pollution and severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections are complicated and vague.
Objective:
This short research investigated the distribution of COVID-19 and its association with particulate matter before mass vaccination.
Methods:
We used the reported cases and deaths per capita and PM2.5 (particulate matter ≤ 2.5 μm) in 245 cities in the United Kingdom (UK) and United State, of America (USA) based on publicity available secondary data. We performed correlation and regression analysis between variables to explore the association between COVID-19 and PM2.5.
Results:
The analysis revealed that PM2.5 positively correlated with cases (Unstandardized Coefficient (b):150.04, P=0.006) and deaths per capita (b: 3.87, P=0.005) in total cities, after adjusting for median age and population density.
Conclusion:
The findings showed that the distribution of the disease may be affected by the PM2.5 concentration.
Keywords: Air pollution, COVID-19, PM2.5, Public health.
Article Information
Article History:
Electronic publication date: 22/6/2022
Collection year: 2022
© 2022 Sarmadi.
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Health, Torbat Heydariyeh University of Medical Sciences, Torbat Heydariyeh, Iran; Email: msarmadi2@gmail.com # Equal contribution