The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on air pollution: a global research framework, challenges, and future perspectives

Khalid Mehmood; Sana Mushtaq; Yansong Bao; Saifullah; Sadia Bibi; Muhammad Yaseen; Muhammad Ajmal Khan; Muhammad Mohsin Abrar; Zaid Ulhassan; Shah Fahad; George P Petropoulos

doi:10.1007/s11356-022-19484-5

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on air pollution: a global research framework, challenges, and future perspectives

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Jul;29(35):52618-52634. doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-19484-5. Epub 2022 Mar 9.

Authors

Khalid Mehmood^{1

2

3}, Sana Mushtaq⁴, Yansong Bao^{5

6}, Saifullah⁷, Sadia Bibi⁷, Muhammad Yaseen⁸, Muhammad Ajmal Khan⁹, Muhammad Mohsin Abrar^{10

11}, Zaid Ulhassan¹², Shah Fahad^{13

14}, George P Petropoulos¹⁵

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster, Ministry of Education (KLME), Joint International Research Laboratory of Climate and Environment Change (ILCEC)/Collaborative Innovation Center On Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters (CIC-FEMD)/CMA Key Laboratory for Aerosol-Cloud-Precipitation, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China.
² School of Atmospheric Physics, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China.
³ School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China.
⁴ Nishtar Medical University, Multan, Pakistan.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster, Ministry of Education (KLME), Joint International Research Laboratory of Climate and Environment Change (ILCEC)/Collaborative Innovation Center On Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters (CIC-FEMD)/CMA Key Laboratory for Aerosol-Cloud-Precipitation, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China. ysbao@nuist.edu.cn.
⁶ School of Atmospheric Physics, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China. ysbao@nuist.edu.cn.
⁷ Institute of Soil and Environmental Sciences, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad, 38040, Pakistan.
⁸ Faculty of Sciences, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad, 38040, Pakistan.
⁹ Deanship of Library Affairs, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
¹⁰ College of Resources and Environment, Zhongkai University of Agriculture and Engineering, 510225, Guangzhou, China.
¹¹ Engineering and Technology Research Center for Agricultural Land Pollution and Integrated Prevention, Guangzhou, China.
¹² Institute of Crop Sciences, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Laboratory of Spectroscopy Sensing, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China.
¹³ Hainan Key Laboratory for Sustainable Utilization of Tropical Bioresource, College of Tropical Crops, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, Hainan, China. shah_fahad@yahoo.com.
¹⁴ Department of Agronomy, University of Haripur, Haripur, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. shah_fahad@yahoo.com.
¹⁵ Department of Geography, Harokopio University of Athens, El. Venizelou 70, 17671, Kallithea, Athens, Greece.

Abstract

As a result of extreme modifications in human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, the status of air quality has recently been improved. This bibliometric study was conducted on a global scale to quantify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on air pollution, identify the emerging challenges, and discuss the future perspectives during the course of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. For this, we have estimated the scientific production trends between 2020 and 2021 and investigated the contributions of countries, institutions, authors, and most prominent journals metrics network analysis on the topic of COVID-19 combined with air pollution research spanning the period between January 01, 2020, and June 21, 2021. The search strategy retrieved a wide range of 2003 studies published in scientific journals from the Web of Sciences Core Collection (WoSCC). The findings indicated that (1) publications on COVID-19 pandemic and air pollution were 990 (research articles) in 2021 with 1870 citations; however, the year 2020 witnessed only 830 research articles with a large number 16,600 of citations. (2) China ranked first in the number of publications (n = 365; 18.22% of the global output) and was the main country in international cooperation network, followed by the USA (n = 278; 13.87% of the global output) and India (n = 216; 10.78 of the total articles). (3) By exploring the co-occurrence and links strengths of keywords "COVID-19" (1075; 1092), "air pollution" (286; 771), "SARS-COV-2" (252; 1986). (4) The lessons deduced from the COVID-19 pandemic provide defined measures to reduce air pollution globally. The outcomes of the present study also provide useful guidelines for future research programs and constitute a baseline for researchers in the domain of environmental and health sciences to estimate the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on air pollution.

Keywords: Air pollution; Bibliometric analysis; COVID-19; Web of Science.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Air Pollution*
Bibliometrics
COVID-19* / epidemiology
Pandemics
Publications