Can the air stay clean after COVID-19? New numbers are promising, but the public must act.
It is both an accidental benefit and a painful irony that a worldwide economic shutdown caused by COVID-19 has so cleared the air that these nervous and grim days pass beneath a dome of pure blue sky. The effort to slow the spread of a disease that attacks the lungs has made it easier for the unaffected to breathe.
In badly polluted India, people for the first time in years are seeing the snow-capped tops of the Himalayas from hundreds of miles away. In Los Angeles, suddenly without traffic, the smog has lifted. And here in North Carolina, the air is crystalline, especially after spring rains rinse away the pollen.
The air quality index rates air pollution readings up to 50 as “good” and up to 100 as “moderate.” Last year during the period from March 15 to April 15, Charlotte had 13 days that rose to moderate. This year, for the same period, there were only three. In the Triangle over the same period, there were eight days that rose to moderate in 2019; this year every day was rated good.
It’s an illustration that clean air is not some Utopian fantasy of climate change activists. It’s very attainable. But is there any way to conquer this virus without surrendering this cleaner air when normal economic activity resumes?
We took this question to Viney Aneja, an air quality professor in the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at North Carolina State University. Aneja, the recipient of the 2007 North Carolina Science Award, developed one of the nation’s leading air-quality and climate research programs at N.C. State.
“The is a teaching moment,” he said. “We should learn from it. We should promote behavior that will allow air quality to be as good as it is outside right now.”
This clean air will lose purity as commerce and traffic resume and if global warming continues, but the drama of seeing what happened when we all just stopped may inspire a renewed push for less pollution.
Cleaner air, like the social distancing that has created it, could help with the fight against COVID-19. Some who succumb to the disease have lungs compromised by air pollution and pollution-related asthma.
“Solving the pollution problem will make our immune systems better, which will help us deal with COVID-19. These are linked issues in my judgment,” Aneja said.
One obstacle to cleaner air is the Trump administration’s push to ease regulations. As the COVID-19 crisis started, the administration rolled back higher automobile gas millage requirements. This week, despite research showing that fine particle pollution has contributed to COVID-19 deaths, the EPA declined to impose stricter controls on industrial soot.
“It is clear to everybody that the current federal administration is not a fan of the environment,” Aneja said. “They’re more in favor of increasing industrial productivity and reducing the costs. But I believe protecting the environment and productivity go hand in hand. You have a healthier worker.”
Aneja has not given up on achieving on a lasting basis the quality of air we have now.
“I’m an optimistic fellow,” he said. “ I think these issues will rise to the fore in this country and we will want and demand that our air and water be as clean as they possibly can be.”
He said of the COVID-19 crisis, “It, too, shall pass, but that does not mean poor air quality should return. It, too, should be made history.”
The COVID-19 threat is clear. As a result, for now, so is the air. Perhaps this affliction of the lungs will remind the nation that making it easier to breathe should matter more than making it easier to profit.
This story was originally published April 19, 2020 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Can the air stay clean after COVID-19? New numbers are promising, but the public must act.."