Lipsitt, Jonah. (2021, March 22). “Spatial analysis of COVID-19 and traffic-related air pollution in Los Angeles.” PMC – NCBI. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7983457/

As Covid-19 has rattled our world in the past couple of years, many have begun to link some aspects of these numbers to the growing air pollution in these major cities. One being Los Angeles, which contains some of the most condensed and populated areas, especially within the gasoline vehicles and what they are emitting into our air. In California, 62% of nitrogen oxide emissions come from our vehicles. This pollution in our air, couples with the Covid-19 virus, has been studied and shown to increase mortality rates within those who have the virus. These findings were consistent throughout the studies and a direct correlation could be made between NO2 and Covid-19 case-fatality.

This article is very intriguing to me because I have recently seen the terrible population condensity that Los Angeles is currently experiencing within their city and highways. It is unbelievable how many people are there, and even worse, how many of them are using their gasoline cars to try and maneuver throughout the city. This will obviously do serious damage to the air surrounding them due to the massive amounts of NO2 each car is releasing. The Covid-19 relation is super interesting because oftentimes, Covid-19 causes shortness of breath and trouble breathing; that on top of breathing low quality air can definitely cause issues for those who contracted the virus in the city of Los Angeles. This is just an example, where our own pollution is actually starting to affect our air directly, to the point of raising mortality rates in those who are sick.

Clarke, Kayan. (2021, April 13). “A Narrative Review of Occupational Air Pollution and Respiratory Health in Farmworkers.” Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. Retrieved February 6, 2022, from https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/8/4097

Oftentimes, those working in the farms and agricultural areas are those of an ethnic minority with little access to sufficient health care. This is vital for them, as they work in areas with poor air quality and high air pollution from agricultural dust exposure. This has been directly linked to many respiratory illnesses that cause issues for a large majority of farmworkers. After doing several studies, they measured a number of air pollutants, from pollutants from dust to volatile organic compounds, and even bacteria and inhalable microorganisms were all found within the air of many agricultural areas where these individuals work. 

I believe that these farmland workers who are exposed to such pollutants should be granted free health care for their hard labor. If not this, I believe that we should not be growing these certain crops that are releasing such large amounts of pollution into our atmosphere. Many of these farmland workers have direct contact with these crops and are surrounded by this poor air at all hours while they work. This goes back to our biosequestration letters and how we must value our agricultural damages just as much as every other factor of climate change. It is not a  surprise that these workers are experiencing major illnesses and health problems surrounding their respiratory system.

Pye, O. T. Havala. (2022, January 10). “Human-Health Impacts of Controlling Secondary Air Pollution Precursors.” Anthropogenic Impacts, ACS Publications. Retrieved February 15, 2022, from https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.estlett.1c00798

The ongoing exposure of the toxic air pollutants, specifically, particulate matter (PM 2.5) and ozone (O3), are causing noticeable health issues for humans across the world. However, these pollutants are secondary in nature which means they are something that is originally produced by us but end up harming us in the air. These pollutants can also create more toxins like nitrous oxides and sulfur oxides. On top of these, VOCs also play a big role in these damages; By reducing these anthropogenic VOC emissions, we would be reducing twice as much air pollution damages within human health compared to the sulfur and nitrous oxides produced by O3 and PM2.5. This shows that we must be attacking the emissions of VOCs much more than we are currently.

This is astonishing because VOCs have not been talked about within these articles that I have been looking at. It seems to be the natural consensus that the ozone and particulate matter are the main pollutants that are mostly ibeings talking about. After doing more research on the VOCs, they are increasingly more damaging when in the air because they feed off of other pollutants that are also in the air. The fact that reading VOCs instead is twice as effective for our human health and the air’s health makes me think that it must be extremely difficult to do so, or else we would already be on it. 

Xu, Lei. (2022, January 1). “Short-term air pollution exposure and COVID-19 infection in the United States.” Environmental Pollution, ScienceDirect. Retrieved February 14, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749121019515

In this article, they created a nationwide study of air pollution to analyze the correlation of short-term air pollution and the Covid-19 virus cases. Within a four month span, they found 554 counties with PM2.5 and 670 counties for ozone (O3) out of 806 counties studied. With this, the short term exposure of PM2.5 and O3 and the relationship with Covid-19 cases was studied. They found that with every 10 μg/m3 increase in mean pollution concentration, the number of daily Covid-19 cases increased by 9.41% for PM2.5 and 2.42% for O3. This means that the exposure to these pollutants, especially PM2.5 will increase the spread of the Covid-19 virus worldwide.

This is very concerning for the sake of our future and humanity in general. While our air pollution is nowhere near coming to an end, we are merely making our living environments on this planet worse and worse. On top of that, as new viruses and Covid-19 variants come out, the pollutants and emissions within our air help these viruses spread even quicker. We are essentially fueling these viruses to become stronger and stronger, which in the end, hurts us as humans. This also makes me wonder about PM2.5 because we have not gone over that pollutant as much, since it is so obviously harmful. 

Yazdi, Mahdieh. (2022, February 22). “Long-Term Association of Air Pollution and Hospital Admissions Among Medicare Participants Using a Doubly Robust Additive Model.” Circulation, Vol. 143, No.16. Retrieved February 5, 2022, from https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.120.050252

In this study, they examined the long-term exposure of particulate matter with the tropospheric ozone and NO2 within our air to hospital admissions where they studied the correlation to respiratory issues like strokes, atrial flutters, and pneumonia. They found that long-term exposure to fine particulate matter had a direct correlation to an increase in risk of strokes. They also found that the NO2 within our air also had the same direct correlation with strokes and the number of people being admitted into our hospitals for strokes. From this, we can conclude that long-term exposure to these air pollutants causes a significant risk to cardiovascular and respiratory health, especially amongst the elderly. 

This study and the results that come with it are not surprising at all. While searching for these articles, there seems to be a common trend among our damages of polluting the air to our health and growing health conditions across the country. This should be a serious worry for many because we do not know how long the pollutant-infested air has been causing damage to us. Imagine a child being born into the world in 2022; they would essentially be breathing in this poor air for the whole entire duration of their lives. I will not be surprised if the next generations see a decline in respiratory and cardiovascular health.

Raj P. Fadadu, MS. (2021, June 1) “Association of WILDFIRE Air Pollution and Health Care Use FOR Atopic Dermatitis and Itch.” JAMA Dermatology, JAMA Network. Retrieved August 17, 2021 from jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/article-abstract/2778632. 

Many believe that air pollution and poor air quality is the cause for many skin issues amongst us. This study shows that the short-term exposure to poor air quality from wildfire has caused a large outbreak in skin conditions and overall skin health. The relation between the two is still not certain, but many believe that this skin health is yet another issue that the poor air quality is causing us. The California Camp Fires caused over 8000 dermatology and hospital visits near the San Francisco area. This definitely shows the damages the atmosphere can have on us, and doctors hope to get a better understanding of what the air can really do to our skin.

As talked about before, skin health is another worry for us surrounding what the poor air quality can really do to us. More and more studies are coming out with common health issues being caused or worsened from air pollution. As I stated before, this is just the start and soon the pollution will begin to weaken our immune and bodily systems, and make us a more ill species in general. As humans naturally adapt, doctors and medicine can only do so much because we cannot compete with the detrimental effects our environment is slowly but surely having on us. Overall, we only have one earth and one environment to take care of. So as we continue to treat them horribly, they are not afraid to give us our own medicine right back. From California wildfires, to just man-made pollution, humans will begin to feel the wrath of nature and our environment.

Wisckol, Martin. (2021, March 17) “Wildfires Made California Air Quality among Worst in the World, Even during Pandemic.” The Mercury News, The Mercury News. Retrieved August 16, 2021 from www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/17/wildfires-made-california-air-quality-among-worst-in-the-world-even-during-pandemic/

    The wildfires across California have officially made our air quality one of the worst in the world. As Southern California ranked amongst the most polluted cities in the world, the wildfires did not make it any better. Our world saw an improvement in air quality due to the factories being shut down, and although the same happened in California, we have had wildfires across our state like no other. Even though California has some of the strictest pollution laws, there is not much you can do about the already present climate change causing wildfire all over California.

    This article shuts down some of the previous claims I have read about surrounding our air getting better since Covid-19. Even though we saw some improvements in our air quality, wildfire will only continue to happen and even possibly at even higher rates. This evokes fear in myself and others that states like California are unsaveable. I hear everyday that “climate change is becoming irreversible” and we are running out of time, but I believe that we have already run out of time and it is far too late. Wildfires are going to become much more common, and although we can shut down our factories and power plants, we cannot shut down nature. We have affected our environment and atmosphere to a point where there is no turning back. I fear for what California will look like in a decade.

Elser, Holly. (2021, May 10). “Air Pollution, METHANE Super-Emitters, and Oil and Gas Wells in Northern California: The Relationship with Migraine Headache Prevalence and Exacerbation.” Environmental Health, BioMed Central. Retrieved August 15, 2021, from link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-021-00727-w. 

    Air pollution is also starting to become intertwined with our everyday migraines and headaches. Migraines affect over one billion people today, and scientists are beginning to relate some of these cases to the increase of exposure towards fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Sutter Health helps over three million Northern Calirfonians, and they found the relation of migraine case status as well as the severity of the migraines to the abundance of toxins circulating in the air. They claim, “for each 5 ppb increase in NO2, we observed 2% increased odds of migraine case status (95% CI: 1.00, 1.05)”.

    This article dives into the actual specific effects of the pollution on Californians surrounding migraines. As the previous article talked about the general health concerns for us, as we breathe in this toxic air, we find out here that it is also causing migraines to be not only more common, but also more severe. It makes me wonder what other specific health issues it has caused us, that we are just unaware of and have not found out yet. I worry about what all of the environmental issues and science surrounding air pollution and quality will do to humans, plants, animals, etc. in the next few years. As climate change goes hand in hand with air pollution, more and more issues are popping up due to our climate’s struggles.

Yan, Qi. (2021, May 14). “Metabolomic and EPIGENOMIC Assessment of Air Pollution and Pesticides Exposure in California.” EScholarship, University of California. Retrieved August 14, 2021, from escholarship.org/uc/item/1h5654mk

    Air pollutants and pesticides have become more abundant in our state’s atmosphere in the last years. This is believed to cause “various health outcomes such as birth outcomes, cardiovascular diseases, neurodevelopmental disorders, and neurodegenerative diseases” amongst us. The toxins circulating the air from pollution have been known to cause health issues, but are starting to become the cause for much more than we initially thought. Scientists began studying the first trimester of pregnancy and the effects the pollutants had on Californians, and they found “that in total, we identified 432 metabolomic features that discriminated between the high (n=98) and low air pollution exposed group (n=62)”, which essentially means that inflammatory and stress levels were much higher due to the poor air quality.

    This article went into detail about the effects that air pollution and poor air quality had on us as humans, and not so much as what it does to our environment, especially in California. This is yet another thing we must worry about, as climate change has begun to seriously affect our air and what we breathe in every day. Soon, the absurd amounts of toxins and chemicals in our atmosphere will begin to be more detrimental to our bodies than anything else. I wonder what our future holds when we will soon have been breathing in cigarette fumes every day for the past years, and what that will do to our lungs. I am certain that it will cause a surplus of lung cancer cases, as air pollution could eventually become more deadly to humanity than cigarettes are. In sum, this is another wake up call for us to preserve our breathable air and atmosphere in general. 

Liu, Qian. (2021, August 10). “Spatiotemporal Impacts of Covid-19 on Air Pollution in California, USA.” Science of The Total Environment, Elsevier. Retrieved August 14, 2020, from www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969720351214

    As the Covid-19 virus has been spreading throughout the world for the past two years, putting the world in lockdown, has had its impacts on our environment surrounding air quality and air pollution, in California specifically. In the start of the lockdown, we saw pollution rates steadily decrease, as major power plants were being shut down. From March 19-May 7, there was a “38%, 49%, and 31% drop in the concentration of NO2, carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) during the lockdown”. This shows the environmental benefits of the lockdown on California’s air quality and pollution, as our air quality numbers were the best they have been for the last five years in that given time.

    This article shed some light on the environmental benefits of the Covid-19 lockdown across our world, but more specifically in California. California had already been struggling with air quality before the lockdown, as wildfires began destroying our environment all across the state. On top of that, there are still major power plants across California that have obviously been negatively affecting our environment as well. So when we were put into lockdown, the power plants and everything causing our environment to decline, were all shut down causing a great turn around with our air quality and pollution. Unfortunately, as we have been getting out of lockdown and opening everything back up again, our air quality has gotten worse again. With this we can only hope that we are more mindful with our environment, as climate change is seeming to become humanity’s greatest issue.