Il Covid and its variants proliferate wherever it is air pollution. Since its first diffusion, Italian and foreign studies and research have been collide on the subject supporting opposing arguments. Despite field investigations starting from the Po Valley and the Veneto, researchers and scientists have never reached a shared conclusion. Moreover, there is still no unanimity on other correlations of the disease with exogenous factors. But in 2021 it was discovered that where there are green areas and controlled areas the The spread of Covid-19 has completely different characteristics.
The theme is being revived by the journal “Environmental Research” which has published a research by the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine (Sima) in collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine of the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Sannio. The Italian-Spanish study verified the relationship between hospitalizations or deaths from Covid and the extension of public green areas in 10 Italian cities and 8 Spanish provinces with more than 500.000 inhabitants. For Italy, the cities covered by the survey were Rome, Bologna, Catania, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Turin and Venice. For Spain Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Malaga, Las Palmas and Bilbao. Cities with different population densities but which in relation to environmental quality have had different dynamics in the spread of the pandemic. In other words, infections, hospitalizations and deaths were lower in those cities that boast a greater extension of public green spaces and very low average annual concentrations of PM2.5.
A research with impressive numbers
"The research shows, in fact, the different impacts in terms of infections, hospitalizations and mortality that Covid has produced in the various territories according to the intensity of air pollution and the extension of green areas, constituting further proof that the he environment directly and significantly affects our state of health”, says President Sima, Alexander Miani. The numbers? In 2021, with an increase of 2 km of urban green areas per 100.000 inhabitants, there were around 68 fewer infections among the population, 1 hospitalization saved and 115 deaths avoided. Air pollution, then, was even more harmful “where for each increase of 1 microgram per cubic meter of PM2.5 per 100.000 inhabitants corresponds to 367 more infections, 2 hospitalizations and even 796 avoidable deaths. “These are dramatic numbers which – needless to say – go hand in hand with the mission of the Society of Environmental Medicine, according to which prevention in sectors such as transport, energy, agriculture, industry it is the basis of the reduction of health risks deriving from the living environment.
Covid-environment: research methodologies in Italy and Spain
In the case of the Italian-Spanish research, methodologies of analysis have been applied which should be more persuasive than those used in previous circumstances. Linear and generalized models were used for the statistics which also included PM2.5, the dangerous airborne particulate matter that enters the lungs. A multivariate approach which took into account the average annual concentrations coming from the official air quality monitoring stations, in relation to the number of inhabitants. However, he adds Andrea Falco, statistics professor in Madrid “two different methodologies were applied. A bottom-up approach to Spanish institutional data relating to infections/hospitalizations/deaths and the extension of public green areas. For Italy, however, a top-down approach was used, starting from the official data of infections/hospitalizations/deaths of each province and linking them to OECD statistics on the extent of public green areas in the various areas". The Covid-environment combination, therefore, resurfaces on the eve of an uncertain autumn both for the treatments to be practiced in the territories and for the initiatives to be developed. The increase in green surfaces and the fight against polluting emissions can be the best point of balance to arrive at that synthesis with a connected mobilization, desired by the physicist Antonello Pasini in a'interview on FIRSTonline.
