Fluctuations in environmental pollutants and air quality during the lockdown in the USA and China: two sides of COVID-19 pandemic

Shakoor, Awais; Chen, Xiaoyong; Farooq, Taimoor Hassan; Shahzad, Umer; Ashraf, Fatima; Rehman, Abdul; Sahar, Najam e; Yan, Wende

The World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Due to the global threat, many countries impose immediate lockdown. The impact of lockdown on the environmental pollutants and climate indicators gained considerable attention in the literature. This study aims to describe the variations in the environmental pollutants (CO, NO(2), SO(2), PM(2.5) and PM(10)) with and without the lockdown period in the majorly hit states and provinces of the USA and China, respectively. Data during the first quarter year of 2019 and 2020 (lockdown period) was used in this study. Moreover, the effect of these pollutants on the pandemic spread was also studied. The results illustrated that the overall concentrations of CO, NO(2) and PM(2.5) were decreased by 19.28%, 36.7% and 1.10%, respectively, while PM(10) and SO(2) were increased by 27.81% and 3.81% respectively in five selected states of the USA during the lockdown period. However, in the case of chosen provinces of China, overall, the concentrations of all selected pollutants, i.e., CO, NO(2), SO(2), PM(2.5) and PM(10), were reduced by 26.53%, 38.98%, 18.36%, 17.78% and 37.85%, respectively. The COVID-19 reported cases and deaths were significantly correlated with NO(2), PM(2.5) and PM(10) in both China and the USA. The findings of this study concluded that the limited anthropogenic activities in the lockdown situation due to this novel pandemic disease result in a significant improvement of air quality by reducing the concentrations of environmental pollutants. As the trend goes on, the reduction of most pollutant concentrations is expected as long as partial or complete lockdown goes on. [Figure: see text] ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11869-020-00888-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.