The populations of Paris and Lombardy have been particularly affected by the pandemic. A correlation which is explained in particular by an increased fragility of residents to chronic inflammation caused by fine and ultrafine particles.
Over the past year, researchers have already established, particularly in the United States and Italy, that there is a direct link between the Covid-19 mortality rate and fine particle air pollution. This correlation is also very marked in Paris and in the large cities of Lombardy, where the atmospheric air is very loaded with PM2.5 (fine particles that are less than 2.5 micrometers, or millionths of a meter in diameter). “Conversely, there are very few mortality peaks, per million inhabitants, in Baden-Württemberg or North Rhineland, where there have been no or few pollution peaks,” adds Jean-Baptiste Renard, research director at the CNRS in Orléans and first author of an article published at the end of July in the journal Science of The Total Environment.
Full article (Fr) : Le Figaro