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research article

Covid-19 mobility restrictions: impacts on urban air quality and health

Mohajeri, Nahid
•
Walch, Alina  
•
Gudmundsson, Agust
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January 1, 2021
Buildings & Cities

In 2020, Covid-19-related mobility restrictions resulted in the most extensive human made air -quality changes ever recorded. The changes in mobility are quantified in terms of outdoor air pollution (concentrations of PM2.5 and NO2) and the associated health impacts in four UK cities (Greater London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast). After applying a weather -corrected machine learning (ML) technique, all four cities show NO2 and PM2.5 concentration anomalies in 2020 when compared with the ML -predicted values for that year. The NO2 anomalies are -21% for Greater London, -19% for Cardiff, -27% for Belfast and -41% for Edinburgh. The PM2.5 anomalies are 7% for Greater London, -1% for Cardiff, -15% for Edinburgh, -14% for Belfast. All the negative anomalies, which indicate pollution at a lower level than expected from the weather conditions, are attributable to the mobility restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 lockdowns. Spearman rank -order correlations show a significant correlation between the lowering of NO2 levels and reduction in public transport (p < 0.05) and driving (p < 0.05), which is associated with decline in NO2-attributable mortality. These positive effects of the mobility restrictions public health can be used to evaluate policies for improved outdoor air quality.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.5334/bc.124
Web of Science ID

WOS:001208589600010

Author(s)
Mohajeri, Nahid
Walch, Alina  
Gudmundsson, Agust
Heaviside, Clare
Askari, Sadaf
Wilkinson, Paul
Davies, Michael
Date Issued

2021-01-01

Publisher

Ubiquity Press Ltd

Published in
Buildings & Cities
Volume

2

Issue

1

Start page

759

End page

778

Subjects

Technology

•

Air Pollution

•

Air Quality

•

Cities

•

Covid-19

•

Environmental Health

•

Lockdown

•

Machine Learning

•

Mobility

•

No2

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Pm2.5

•

Public Health

•

Transport

•

Vehicles

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LESO-PB  
FunderGrant Number

Wellcome Trust for the 'Complex Urban System for Sustainability and Health (CUSSH) project

NERC fellowship

216035/Z/19/Z

Wellcome Trust HEROIC project

209387/Z/17/Z

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Available on Infoscience
May 16, 2024
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/207972
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