Air Quality Variation in Wuhan, Daegu, and Tokyo during the Explosive Outbreak of COVID-19 and Its Health Effects

Abstract

This study was designed to assess the variation of the air quality actually measured from the air pollution monitoring stations (AQMS) in three cities (Wuhan, Daegu, and Tokyo), in Asian countries experiencing the explosive outbreak of COVID-19, in a short period of time. In addition, we made a new attempt to calculate the reduced DosePM2.5 (μg) at the bronchiolar (Br.) and alveolar-interstitial (AI) regions of the 10-year-old children after the city lockdown/self-reflection of each city. A comparison of the average PM2.5 of a month before and after the lockdown (Wuhan) and self-reflection (Daegu and Tokyo) clearly shows that the PM2.5 concentration was decreased by 29.9, 20.9, and 3.6% in Wuhan, Daegu and Tokyo, respectively. Wuhan, Daegu and Tokyo also recorded 53.2, 19.0, and 10.4% falls of NO2 concentration, respectively. Wuhan, which had the largest decrease of PM2.5 concentration due to COVID-19, also marked the largest reduced DosePM2.5 10-year-old children (μg) (3660 μg at Br. and 6222 μg at AI), followed by Daegu (445 μg at Br. and 1287 μg at AI), and Tokyo (18 μg at Br. and 52 μg at AI), over two months after the city lockdown/self-reflection. Our results suggest that the city lockdown/self-reflection had the effect of lowering the concentration of PM2.5, resulting in an extension of the period it took to the acute allergic airway inflammation (AAI) for the 10-year-old children.