Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jun 1:254:118388.
doi: 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2021.118388. Epub 2021 Apr 7.

Impact of the COVID-19 induced lockdown measures on P M 2.5 concentration in USA

Rahul Ghosal  1 , Enakshi Saha  2
Affiliations

Impact of the COVID-19 induced lockdown measures on P M 2.5 concentration in USA

Rahul Ghosal et al. Atmos Environ (1994). .

Abstract

In 2020, most countries around the world have observed varying degrees of public lockdown measures to mitigate the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. As an unintended consequence of reduced transportation and industrial activities, air quality has dramatically improved in many major cities around the world. In this paper, we analyze the environmental impact of the lockdown measures on P M 2.5 concentration levels in 48 core-based statistical areas (CBSA) of the United States, during the pre and post-lockdown period of January to June 2020. We model the effect of lockdown on the P M 2.5 concentration in different CBSAs while adjusting for various meteorological factors like temperature, wind-speed, precipitation and snow. Linear mixed effects models and functional regression methods with random intercepts are employed to capture the heterogeneity of the effect across different regions. Our analysis shows there is a statistically significant reduction in levels of P M 2.5 across most of the regions during the lock-down period, although interestingly, this effect is not uniform across all the CBSAs under consideration.

Keywords: Air quality; COVID-19; Functional regression; Lockdown; Mixed effects model; PM2.5.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Daily PM2.5 concentration in 4 representative CBSA areas (from 1 January to 29th June with (red) and without (blue) lockdown. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Estimated and predicted trajectories of daily PM2.5 concentration levels (log-transformed) in the 4 representative CBSA areas from Model 1.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Estimated time-varying effect of lockdown on daily PM2.5 concentration levels (log-transformed) between 21st march to 29th June from Model 1 along with its 95% point-wise confidence interval. The number of days since beginning of the study (1st January) is represented through “time”.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Archer C.L., Cervone G., Golbazi M., Al Fahel N., Hultquist C. Changes in air quality and human mobility in the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bulletin of Atmospheric Science and Technology. 2020:1–24. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Barboza T. Los Angeles Times; 2020. How the Coronavirus Is Hampering Enforcement of California's Air Pollution Rules.
    1. Chauhan A., Singh R.P. Decline in PM2. 5 concentrations over major cities around the world associated with COVID-19. Environ. Res. 2020;187:109634. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chen L.-W.A., Chien L.-C., Li Y., Lin G. Nonuniform impacts of COVID-19 lockdown on air quality over the United States. Sci. Total Environ. 2020;745:141105. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Covid19.Ca.GOV . COVID19.CA.GOV; 2020. Blueprint for a Safer Economy. 2020.

LinkOut - more resources