SOURCE:
https://www.newsday.com/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-sensory-impact-1.44094149
By Matthew Chayes - April 25, 2020
Monitoring from the state Department of Environmental Conservation shows a decline in particulate matter — down 17% in Suffolk County and 13% in Nassau, comparing March 2019 to March 2020, an agency spokesman said in an email. The reductions are even higher in New York City — as high as 35%.
Particulate matter is produced by activity like fuel burning to heat buildings and run automobiles, chemical reactions and dust from industry. It's been linked to respiratory disease, irregular heartbeat and premature death.
A small increase in long-term exposure to fine particulate matter results in a large increase in the coronavirus death rate, according to a study published this month by Harvard University.
Adrienne Esposito, the longtime executive director of Farmingdale-based Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said the air Long Islanders breathe has become noticeably cleaner, owing to a steep decline, since mid-March’s lockdown, of exhaust emitted by automobiles — on some major roadways, more than half of vehicles — and the closure of factories and other industry like manufacturers that emit pollutants.
“The air is cleaner and healthier for the public,” she said, “so there’s less toxic chemicals and less contaminants going into our lungs.”
It’s not just that Long Island and New York City are polluting less, she said: the regional airshed is cleaner, because there’s less pollution as far away as the Midwestern United States.
“From the Midwest, the emissions will blow across the continent and toward Long Island and deposit particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide,” she said, naming three types of pollutants that have been reduced since the shutdown.
Cleaner skies are being seen across the world. In India, the amount of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide has fallen up to 60% during that country’s lockdown, according to the not-for-profit Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi.
Around the world, lockdowns have throttled human contact, limiting whom we see in person to immediate family or roommates.