Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter air pollution: An ecological study of its effect on COVID-19 cases and fatality in Germany

Abstract

Background: COVID-19 is a lung disease, and there is medical evidence that air pollution is one of the external causes of lung diseases. Fine particulate matter is one of the air pollutants that damages pulmonary tissue. The combination of the coronavirus and fine particulate matter air pollution may exacerbate the coronavirus' effect on human health.

Research question: This paper considers whether the long-term concentration of fine particulate matter of different sizes changes the number of detected coronavirus infections and the number of COVID-19 fatalities in Germany.

Study design: Data from 400 German counties for fine particulate air pollution from 2002 to 2020 are used to measure the long-term impact of air pollution. Kriging interpolation is applied to complement data gaps. With an ecological study, the correlation between average particulate matter air pollution and COVID-19 cases, as well as fatalities, are estimated with OLS regressions. Thereby, socioeconomic and demographic covariates are included.

Main findings: An increase in the average long-term air pollution of 1 μg/m³ particulate matter PM_2.5 is correlated with 199.46 (SD = 29.66) more COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in Germany. For PM₁₀ the respective increase is 52.38 (SD = 12.99) more cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The number of COVID-19 deaths were also positively correlated with PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ (6.18, SD = 1.44, respectively 2.11, SD = 0.71, additional COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants).

Conclusion: Long-term fine particulate air pollution is suspected as causing higher numbers of COVID-19 cases. Higher long-term air pollution may even increase COVID-19 death rates. We find that the results of the correlation analysis without controls are retained in a regression analysis with controls for relevant confounding factors. Nevertheless, additional epidemiological investigations are required to test the causality of particulate matter air pollution for COVID-19 cases and the severity.

Keywords: COVID-19 cases; COVID-19 mortality; County-level data Germany; Long-term air pollution; Particulate matter PM(10) and PM(2.5).