ArticleEnvironmental research2022
Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter air pollution: An ecological study of its effect on COVID-19 cases and fatality in Germany.
Article in Environmental research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Modulation of COVID-19 incidence by environmental stressors is variant between pre-Omicron and Omicron periods.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Social Determinants of Health: Analysis of the Effect of Socio-environmental Factors to Diseases, Injury-related DALYs, and Deaths based on WHO, ILO, and WB Data.Acta medica Philippina · 2025Article
- [Global environmental changes and the epithelial barrier hypothesis].Dermatologie (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2024Review
- The effects of COVID-19 on agriculture supply chain, food security, and environment: a review.PeerJ · 2024Review
- Linkage between Airborne Particulate Matter and Viral Pandemic COVID-19 in Bucharest.Microorganisms · 2023Article
- Peculiar weather patterns effects on air pollution and COVID-19 spread in Tokyo metropolis.Environmental research · 2023Observational
- Long-Term Exposure to Ambient Air Pollution and Mortality among Four Million COVID-19 Cases in Italy: The EpiCovAir Study.Environmental health perspectives · 2023Article
- Dual-bionic nano-groove structured nanofibers for breathable and moisture-wicking protective respirators.Journal of membrane science · 2023Article
- Discussion about the Latest Findings on the Possible Relation between Air Particulate Matter and COVID-19.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Combining aggregate and individual-level data to estimate individual-level associations between air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States.PLOS global public health · 2023Article
- Unanswered questions on the airborne transmission of COVID-19.Environmental chemistry letters · 2023Review
- Association between long-term air pollution exposure and COVID-19 mortality in Latin America.PloS one · 2023Article
- Conducting quantitative mask fit tests: application details and affecting factors.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Cumulative effects of air pollution and climate drivers on COVID-19 multiwaves in Bucharest, Romania.Process safety and environmental protection : transactions of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, Part B · 2022Article
- Impacts of exposure to air pollution, radon and climate drivers on the COVID-19 pandemic in Bucharest, Romania: A time series study.Environmental research · 2022Observational
- Research on COVID-19 and air pollution: A path towards advancing exposure science.Environmental research · 2022Article
- The Challenge of Reaching Undocumented Migrants with COVID-19 Vaccination.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Review
- Proximity to livestock farms and COVID-19 in the Netherlands, 2020-2021.International journal of hygiene and environmental health · 2022Article
- The effect of known and unknown confounders on the relationship between air pollution and Covid-19 mortality in Italy: A sensitivity analysis of an ecological study based on the E-value.Environmental research · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundCOVID-19 is a lung disease, and there is medical evidence that air pollution is one of the external causes of lung diseases. Fine particulate matter is one of the air pollutants that damages pulmonary tissue. The combination of the coronavirus and fine particulate matter air pollution may exacerbate the coronavirus' effect on human health. RESEARCH QUESTION: This paper considers whether the long-term concentration of fine particulate matter of different sizes changes the number of detected coronavirus infections and the number of COVID-19 fatalities in Germany. STUDY
designData from 400 German counties for fine particulate air pollution from 2002 to 2020 are used to measure the long-term impact of air pollution. Kriging interpolation is applied to complement data gaps. With an ecological study, the correlation between average particulate matter air pollution and COVID-19 cases, as well as fatalities, are estimated with OLS regressions. Thereby, socioeconomic and demographic covariates are included. MAIN
findingsAn increase in the average long-term air pollution of 1 μg/m
conclusionLong-term fine particulate air pollution is suspected as causing higher numbers of COVID-19 cases. Higher long-term air pollution may even increase COVID-19 death rates. We find that the results of the correlation analysis without controls are retained in a regression analysis with controls for relevant confounding factors. Nevertheless, additional epidemiological investigations are required to test the causality of particulate matter air pollution for COVID-19 cases and the severity.
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