Air pollution has made the COVID-19 pandemic worse
Air pollution in Shanghai (Holger Link/Unsplash/)In the 50 years since the inception of Earth Day, we’ve had some big wins for the planet—and, consequently, for our health. Chief among those was the 1970 Clean Air Act, which led to the development of air quality standards and decades of increasingly cleaner air. However, many places still suffer from unhealthy air and air pollution may be slowly creeping back. And now, it appears that low air quality is putting people at greater risk of dying from COVID-19. At least three recent studies have connected high levels of air pollution exposure to increased risk of death from the virus. “COVID-19 seems to be affected by air pollution,” says John Balmes, a spokesperson for the American Lung Association and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “Air pollution is a risk factor both for getting the infection and then going...