The Potential role of Particulate Matter in the Spreading of COVID-19 in Northern Italy: First Evidence-based Research Hypotheses

Leonardo Setti; Fabrizio Passarini; Gianluigi De Gennaro; Pierluigi Barbieri; Maria Grazia Perrone; Andrea Piazzalunga; Massimo Borelli; Jolanda Palmisani; Alessia Di Gilio; PRISCO PISCITELLI; Alessandro Miani

We have analyzed daily data relevant to ambient PM 10 levels, urban conditions and virus incidence from all Italian Provinces, in order to reliably determine the association between PM pollution level and the initial spread of COVID-19. PM 10 daily concentration levels were collected by the official air quality monitoring stations of the Regional Environmental Protection Agencies, ARPA), publicly available on their websites. The number of PM 10 infected people for each Province from February 24 th to March 13 th (the date when the lockdown was decided) was that reported on the official Government website, updated with daily frequency [24] . PM 10 exceedances were collected between February 9 th and February 29 th , taking into account the lag period, which is the average time elapsed between the initial infection and the diagnosis. To investigate how high PM 10 concentrations (above the daily limit value) might relate to infection diffusion, we performed an exploratory analysis considering the recursive binary partitioning tree approach, as implemented into the party package [25] of R [26] .