The causal effects of chronic air pollution on the intensity of COVID-19 disease: Some answers are blowing in the wind
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Abstract
The threats posed by COVID-19 have catalyzed a search by researchers across multiple disciplines for policy-relevant findings about critical risk factors. We contribute to this effort by providing causal estimates of the link between increased chronic ambient pollutant concentrations and the intensity of COVID-19 disease, as measured by deaths and hospitalizations in New York City from March through August, 2020. Given concerns about unobservable characteristics that contribute to both ambient air pollutant concentrations and the impacts of COVID-19 disease, we instrument for pollutant concentrations using the time spent downwind of nearby highways and estimate key causal relationships using two-stage least squares models. The causal links between increases in concentrations of our traffic-related air pollutants (PM 2.5 , NO 2 , and NO) and COVID-19 deaths are much larger than the correlations presented in recent observational studies. We find that a 0.16 μg/m 3 increase in average ambient PM 2.5 concentration leads to an approximate 30% increase in COVID-19 deaths. This is the change in concentration associated with being downwind of a nearby highway. We see that this effect is mostly driven by residents with at least 75 years of age. In addition to emphasizing the importance of searching for causal relationships, our analysis highlights the value of increasing the density of pollution-monitoring networks and suggests potential benefits of further tightening of Clean Air Act amendments, as our estimated effects occur at concentrations well below thresholds set by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.28.21256146: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:This limitation relates to the challenge of proxying for exposure to pollutants with measures of their ambient concentration, as the ability to moderate exposure may differ across individuals. This is a challenge for all existing work that has explored the health effects of air quality and their implications for behavior. Access to …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.28.21256146: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:This limitation relates to the challenge of proxying for exposure to pollutants with measures of their ambient concentration, as the ability to moderate exposure may differ across individuals. This is a challenge for all existing work that has explored the health effects of air quality and their implications for behavior. Access to pollutant concentrations at a fine spatial scale through the NYCCAS monitoring network was essential for our project to avoid the limitations of the EPA monitoring network and concentration estimates derived from satellite measurements (20-23). New York City is one of the few places in the United States with such a concentrated network of monitors, and our results suggest that there is great value in the establishment of a national network at similar scales. Still, the large confidence intervals around our point estimates may be partially explained by the presence of numerous local pollutant sources in New York City, the rapid decay of TRAP with increasing distance from highways, and an insufficiently dense monitoring network, further emphasizing the importance of improved data in generating precisely-estimated relationships. The availability of localized information would increase the salience of pollutant levels, possibly allowing for increased uptake of defensive behaviors regarding pollutant exposure. We have shown these behaviors to be very important in the context of COVID-19, which is just one of the respiratory ailments through which air-po...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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