Impact of social lockdown due to COVID-19 on environmental and health risk indices in India

Ambika, S and Basappa, Umesh and Singh, Ananya and et al, . (2021) Impact of social lockdown due to COVID-19 on environmental and health risk indices in India. Environmental Research, 196. pp. 1-17. ISSN 0013-9351

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Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread across the globe through the human transmission. The World Health Organization suggested social distancing to curb the community spread. After national social lockdown started in India, air quality improved drastically. This further hypothesized to influence the environment and human health, and this study is positively the first to weigh it using multiple indices. The calculated environmental indices are photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), acidification potential (AP), and eutrophication potential (EP). The cancer risk, chronic health index (CHI), and acute health index (AHI) were considered to calculate the health risk. The spatial trend change in the air pollution reflecting on these indices are calculated for four Indian megacities Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. Temporal variation was accounted for monthly (2019 vs 2020), one-week and two-weeks period during the social lockdown. The results showed a significant decrease in environmental and health risk during the lockdown due to a corresponding decrement in air pollution. The decrease in the particulate matter was found to play a vital role in altering the air pollution mediated risks of interest. Delhi showed a maximum difference in POCP and Acute HI by recording a dip of 70.79% and 43.53% respectively in 2020 during lockdown. The maximum reduction in health risk indices was 41%, 31%, 17%, 19% for Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. Bangalore recorded the maximum decline in EP, Cancer risk, Chronic HI by 66.66%, 58.62%, and 58.76% in 2020 compared to 2019. A maximum fall in AP was seen in Kolkata by 57.23% in 2020 among all cities. The connection between these drop-in indices and the cause of air pollutants were well discussed. This present paper gives more in-depth insights into air pollution's effect on environmental and health parameters by connecting and converging various air pollution aspects into a single scale. This study also enlightens the importance of controlling air pollution to have a better environment and healthy life to attain sustainable development. © 2021 Elsevier Inc.

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IITH Creators:

IITH Creators	ORCiD
Ambika, S	UNSPECIFIED

Item Type:

Article

Additional Information:

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The corresponding author would like to acknowledge the TEQIP-III internship, 2020 at Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad for their support in terms of providing the interns, and Science Engineering and Research Board ( SERB ), India for their support for the computing facility under Start up Research Grant (File Number: SRG/2020/000793 ).

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Air quality; COVID-19 epidemic; Environmental impact assessment and indices; Health risk indices; Lockdown in India; Pandemic; Social distance; Sustainability development

Subjects:

Civil Engineering

Divisions:

Department of Civil Engineering

Depositing User:

. LibTrainee 2021

Date Deposited:

27 Aug 2022 08:58

Last Modified:

27 Aug 2022 08:58

URI:

http://raiithold.iith.ac.in/id/eprint/10313