In the News
June 14, 2022
Global soot levels scarcely budged in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic despite sweeping lockdowns that were expected to lead to cleaner air, a new report indicates.
From 2019 to 2020, average worldwide concentrations of the sometimes lethal pollutant dipped by less than 1 percent, according to the latest edition of the Air Quality Life Index released this morning.
The lack of change, “even in a year when economies across the world stalled because of the pandemic, underscores the immense challenge air pollution poses and the opportunities to improve human health if strong policies are enacted,” the report from the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute says.
In the United States, for example, average concentrations rose almost 8 percent during that time to 7.1 micrograms per cubic meter of air. While the report does not delve into the reasons for the jump, an accompanying summary notes that rising wildfires have led to added pollution along the West Coast. In 2020, 19 of the nation’s 20 most soot-ridden counties were in California, the summary says. A separate EPA overview last year had come to broadly similar conclusions (Greenwire, May 27, 2021).
At least in the U.S., those results belie what was expected two years ago as restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus led to sharp drops in driving and business activity. But the backsliding was far starker in South Asia, which the new report dubs the “world’s pollution hotspot.”
In Bangladesh, soot levels climbed 13 percent from 2019 to 2020 to almost 76 micrograms per cubic meter of air, or about 15 times the World Health Organization’s recently tightened exposure guideline of 5 micrograms. Such increases over time are unsurprising, the report says, as a combination of industrialization, economic development and population growth led to “skyrocketing energy demand and fossil fuel use across the region.” In India and Pakistan, the number of cars and trucks on the road has soared fourfold since the early 2000s, the authors wrote.