Two mechanisms for accelerated diffusion of COVID-19 outbreaks in regions with high intensity of population and polluting industrialization: the air pollution-to-human and human-to-human transmission dynamics

Mario Coccia

The intensity of human interactions with Earth systems has accelerated in recent decades, because of urban development, population growth, industrialization, deforestation, construction of dams, etc., with changes in physical, biological, and chemical processes in soils and waters. In particular, human activity, driven by a high level of world population that is about eight billion (U. S. Census Bureau 2020), has induced changes to Earth's surface, cryosphere, ecosystems, and climate that are now so great and rapid, advancing the geological epoch of Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000; Foley et al., 2013) . The beginning of the Anthropocene at around 1780 AD marks the beginning of immense rises in human population and carbon emissions as well as atmospheric CO 2 levels (Ellis et al., 2013) . The scale of carbon emissions associated with industrial activity is leading to a rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases at a rate unprecedented and gradual rise in carbon dioxide (Glikson, 2013; Coccia, 2014a) . In this era of Anthropocene, the health effects of air pollution have been subject to intense study in recent years. Exposure to airborne particulate matter and ozone has main health effects associated with increases in mortality and hospital admissions for respiratory and cardiovascular diseases (Kampa and Castanas, 2008; Hoek et al., 2013) . The idea that air pollution episodes have a detrimental effect on health is now rarely contested, and acute . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.