What is the relationship between Coronavirus and pollution?

What is the relationship between the most important outbreaks of Covid-19 in the world? Let’s have a look. The chinese province of Wuhan, one of the most industrialized of the planet. The padana valley, italian industrial pole, and one of the most important in Europe. And we can’t don’t talk about the last allarming outbreak, the big apple. What do these places have in common? Besides the pain that is going through them in this moment? They are between the most industrialized and populated areas of the world and, so, even the most polluted. But what is the relationship between the pollution and the Coronavirus?

The pollution increases the Coronavirus spread?

What do we know about the pain that is currently slash the whole world? We know the symptoms, we count the infected, the deaths and, fortunatelly, even healed. But we don’t know yet from where it arrived, the ones did are only theories, as well as is really difficult to understand how it spreads.

To understand its spreading we have to examinate what the outbreaks have in common. And it comes out that the common thread is the pollution. For this reason many thought that the virus runs fast thanks to the smog. But can this hypothesis being true?

“The high concentration of particulates recorded in the month february in the padana valley produced an acceleration of the spread of the Covid-19. The effect is more clear in the provinces where there were the first outbreaks. The particulate matters are carrying the virus. More there are particulates, more there are highways for the infectors. We must reduce at minimum the emissions, by hopping in a great weather condition”. Those are the words of Leonardo Setti and Gianluigi di Gennaro, respectively of the university of Bologna and Bari.

But even this one is only a theory. Theory that many considered completelly baseless, how can the particulate matters being carriers of the virus? It might not be this kind of connection between the outbreaks and the Coronavirus.

To not risk that everyone start to point the finger to something else, the epidemiologist Pierluigi Lopalco wanted to precise: “The pollution hurts, but I’m afraid that it doesn’t matter with the Covid-19. You don’t have to think that the fresc air can stop the infection: the virus runs with our legs, not with the PM10”.

The planet returns to breath

If the particulate matters increase the spread of the virus or not is still a mystery, but what is sure is that there is a different connection between the Coronavirus and the pollution. The only positive thing of this pandemic that breaks down the whole world.

We go on fighting to come back to our lifes, we are still crying our victims. But we can do it with a lighter heart, because the one that we will find, at the end of this incredible story, will be a healthier planet. The planet returns to breath.

Everyone is at home. There aren’t any more vehicles that fill all the streets that go on the big cities and on the most important industrial poles. Many of the factories that blow harmful fumes all day long closed. And the world finally was able to breath again.

We already saw the incredible change of the air after the lock down of the China. One of the most polluted country of the world sent back pictures of blue skies.

Today, instead, are the italian datas the ones that let us hope, in this dark period. From Milan to Rome, from Bergamo to the Veneto, all the most polluted skies are shining again. The images that the drones, which go around the empty cities, let us cringe. These are post-apocalyptic scenarios, however it’s enough to rise up the eyes to the sky to understand that there is someone that takes advantage from all ot it, the planet.

The reduction of the nitric oxide in Italy goes from the 24% to the 47% with a peak, in Veneto, that arrives up to the 60-80%.

And the same numbers start to arrive even from the other european cities, Barcellona, Madrid, Lisbona, return to breath too.

This post is also available in: Italiano