An-Najah News - Agencies - Two separate studies have found a worrying link between the severity of air pollution in a given area and the risk of dying from COVID-19 the results could help to explain why some areas in the world have significantly higher rates of mortality in the current pandemic.

The team writes in the paper "the results of this paper suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe COVID-19 outcomes," this study was made by researchers at Harvard University by collecting air quality data from 3,000 counties across the US, along with analysis on every death and confirmed case of COVID-19 in the US up until April 4.

Researchers accounted for population size, the number of hospital beds in an area, and a large number of other socioeconomic variables that could have skewed the results.

These are pretty damning findings on their own, but they don't stand alone. A similar study has now been published by geoscientist Yaron Ogen from the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany.

“We'll need more research on both nitrogen dioxide and PM2.5 exposures to nail down the exact relationship of air pollution levels and COVID-19 mortality, but these preliminary results give us a look into how seemingly small air quality changes might be causing large differences in lives lost.

We already know that lowering air pollution can only be good for our health, and this is yet another reminder of this fact.”