Salud Archive | Página 2 de 3

Healthy Air, healthy Planet: International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies

7. septiembre 2021/en Salud, Sostenibilidad/por Barbara Loferer

In 2019, the UN decided to declare September 7 the «International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies». With the Corona-related lockdown, images went around the world showing blue skies where visibility is otherwise severely restricted by polluted air. We have also published a number of articles on this topic, whereby not only the concrete effects on cities were examined, but also the effects on health were questioned. Read more here.

Going hand-in-hand: Your health and the health of our planet

22. abril 2021/en Salud, Sostenibilidad/por Barbara Loferer

Today is “Earth Day”: Time to recall the ambitious goals we have for the reduction of greenhouse gases. It is good to see how prominently the topic of CO2 footprint is covered in the media and in public discussions.

Do the positive effects of the Corona Lock-Down offset the health issues caused by the pandemic?

14. julio 2020/en Análisis e informes, Calidad del aire urbano, Salud/por Adeel Khan

A deeper analysis for Munich

The COVID-19 pandemic has infected about 13 million people and claimed more than 550 thousand deaths worldwide by 14 July 2020. It has been reported in research that high air pollution may be “one of the most important contributors to deaths from COVID-19”. Studies show a positive correlation between particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide to health damage and, more specifically, to diseases related to the lungs like pneumonia, which makes people suffering from these ailments more susceptible to COVID 19. On the other hand, due to the lockdown measures, significant improvement in air quality has been witnessed. Leer más

The long overdue paradigm shift towards a healthy, carbon neutral economy starts with cleaning our air

2. julio 2020/en Salud/por Karim Tarraf

Air quality management – a fascinating lineage

I grew up in Cairo. A city that shows all the typical traits of an emerging economy when it comes to air quality and health. I grew up in a household of doctors, who spent their lifetime researching the delicate relationship between the air we breathe and our health. Here is a paper co-written by my dad for The Lancet Journal on the “Effect of nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide on airway response of mild asthmatic patients to allergen inhalation” written back in 1998. So imagine you grow up seeing and hearing about the “Black Cloud” of Cairo and the rise of patient visits in my parents’ clinic around the dinner table. Or discussions on best treatment options for patients during the long drives towards the Egyptian Red Sea coast with its windy fresh air. Thus, I always understood the topic of air pollution within a context – the context of bad health indicators, exacerbated symptoms, increased healthcare expenditures and overall reduced life quality. Leer más

Time series comparison of pre- and post-lockdown for German cities

28. mayo 2020/en Análisis e informes, Salud/por Barbara Loferer

In general all graphs show that the mean NO2 concentration after the lockdown date has decreased – at some stations the effect is larger than at others. Concentration peaks with similar amplitudes, compared to before the lockdown, persist. The overall patterns would require a more detailed analysis of the locations e.g. considering mobility behaviour.

Berlin
Dresden
Hamburg
Suttgart

Time series comparison of pre- and post-lockdown for sample cities show that the lockdown impact on NO2 concentrations varies

30. abril 2020/en Análisis e informes, Salud/por Birgit Fullerton

Cities worldwide have been imposing lockdowns due to coronavirus, leading to traffic reductions and related to that, less NO2 pollution. The strength of the effect is not the same everywhere, being dependent on a number of variables, such as pollution levels and amount of traffic before the lockdown at the particular location, fleet composition, weather conditions and topography and urban architecture. Furthermore, the measures defining the “lockdown” were not the same everywhere and were also implemented with different levels of rigour. Without analyzing in-depth the factors at play at different places across the world, here just a few examples of what the change in NO2 pollution looked like in a few cities:

Wuhan
Paris
London
Fresno
Dehli
Boston

NO2 concentrations during the lockdown in Munich

24. abril 2020/en Análisis e informes, Salud/por Birgit Fullerton

I have recently heard people uttering disappointment regarding the rather small effect they have observed at official measurement stations in Munich during the time of the lockdown due to the coronavirus. Looking at the raw hourly measurement traces at different locations in and around Munich, we can see a very clear drop during the initial phase of the lockdown, with concentrations coming up again after that. So we decided to take a deeper look. We considered impacts from weather conditions, season-specific influences as well as mobility behaviour. Leer más

See the full picture: There is less net of the improvement in air quality through measures to curb the Covid-19 virus

21. abril 2020/en Movilidad, Salud/por Barbara Loferer

Although measures to curb the Corona virus have (almost) brought many polluters to a standstill, the effects on the trends from measurements are not as obviously visible as some may have expected. In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Dr. Birgit Fullerton, Head of Data Sience of Hawa Dawa, mentions possible reasons why the effects of the lock-down are not more clearly and sustainably recognizable in the air pollutant concentration in the area of Munich Airport (Süddeutsche Zeitung «At the airport you can hear the sparrows chirping»). Leer más

Do Air Pollution Levels Influence COVID-19 Mortality Risk?

31. marzo 2020/en Salud/por Birgit Fullerton

Während die Welt ihre volle Aufmerksamkeit auf den aktuellen Ausbruch des Coronavirus gerichtet hat, scheinen andere Themen, über die wir uns bezüglich unserer Gesundheit sorgen, derzeit für viele von uns fast irrelevant zu sein. Es gibt jedoch einen Faktor, der nicht ignoriert werden sollte- möglicherweise nicht einmal bei der Betrachtung der Überlebensraten von COVID-19: Luftverschmutzung. Es ist zwar noch zu früh, um die Faktoren, die die Überlebensraten von COVID-19 in verschiedenen Regionen der Welt beeinflussen, eindeutig zu bewerten, doch gibt es eine Vielzahl an Hinweisen, die die Hypothese fördern, dass die Luftverschmutzung eine bedeutende Rolle spielen könnte. Leer más