2. I spent last week researching this subject -- our story published late yesterday – and here’s what I found to be the bottom line: There are widespread suspicions of a link and good reasons for those suspicions. But, current published research doesn’t give definitive answers.
3. During the SARS outbreak, for instance, there was a significant study that found worse mortality in Chinese cities with worse air pollution, but it couldn’t control for confounding factors. Not proof of causation, then. link.springer.com/content/pdf/10…
4. In such a situation, what you fall back on – at least until the major epidemiological studies come out – is more basic medical reasoning.
5. First, the experts I spoke with largely grouped smoking and particulate air pollution together for the purposes of this discussion, based on the following reasoning.
6. While smoking is voluntary and breathing in air pollution isn’t, the assault on the lungs is similar, several experts told me, because in each case you are breathing in the particles and gases that result from combustion.
7. What is the result? Well, there are many consequences of breathing in bad air but most relevant perhaps is research suggesting that it might make you more prone to getting pneumonia and having worse pneumonia cases when you do get it. researchgate.net/publication/26…
8. #covid19 frequently causes pneumonia in the bad cases, and sometimes this escalates to even more dangerous conditions from there.
9. The idea, then, is that smoking and air pollution may weaken the lungs’ defenses against infection in such a way as to create a greater risk with #covid19. The disease is deadly anyway, but having already inflamed or weakened lungs certainly doesn’t help.
10. That’s the theory, and we will have to see if new evidence supports it – I imagine a lot of research is already underway.
11. Meanwhile, there are “two step” processes, as one expert put it to me, that more definitively link smoking or air pollution with worse outcomes from #covid19, albeit through an intermediary stage.
12. Thus, air pollution raises the risk of COPD, and people suffering from COPD are pretty clearly at higher risk if they then get a novel coronavirus infection.
13. So that’s what we know. But, I imagine that epidemiological researchers will be trying to design studies to capture the relationship. They’re probably already hard at work now.
14.For more details, interviews, links to studies, etc see my story here washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro… /end
