Where the air is more polluted, there are more deaths from Covid-19

A new US analysis brings to the attention of the authorities a possible link between mortality from Covid-19 and exposure to dangerous air pollutants

(photo: Getty Images) Where the air is dirtiest the coronavirus does more damage. This is the conclusion that a team of US researchers reached by comparing the levels of dangerous air pollutants and mortality per capita for Covid-19 in over 3 thousand counties in the country. As proof - experts say - that long-term exposure to fine and ultra-fine particulate matter makes people more vulnerable to infections.

There is now a large number of studies that investigate the relationship between air pollution and all-cause mortality. And it is in this context that the new analysis, also commissioned by ProPublica and published in Environmental Research Letters, fits, because for the moment an association between air conditions and coronavirus vulnerability is not - at least according to the institutions - enough proven.

The researchers, therefore, compared the air pollution index (the National Air Toxics Assessment 2014, the latest available) of the US environmental protection agency EPA with the per capita mortality from Covid- 19 in the more than 3 thousand US counties, highlighting how in some areas of the country - which we remember being the first in the world for the number of cases and deaths from Covid-19 - not particularly populous but undoubtedly very polluted (for example the rural areas of the valley of Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia) per capita mortality from Covid-19 is higher than in urban areas.