MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cleaner air in European cities as nitrogen dioxide levels drop with lockdowns

Lockdowns in many European countries have curbed road transport - the largest source of nitrogen oxides - and slowed output at gas-emitting factories.

Air pollution has decreased in urban areas across Europe during lockdowns to combat the corona-virus, new satellite images showed on Monday, but campaigners warned city-dwellers were still more vulnerable to the epidemic. Cities including Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Milan and Frankfurt showed a reduction in average levels of noxious nitrogen dioxide over Mar 5-25, compared with the same period last year, according to the Sentinel-5 satellite images.

That coincides with lockdowns in many European countries which have curbed road transport - the largest source of nitrogen oxides - and slowed output at gas-emitting factories.

The new images, released by the European Space Agency (ESA) and analyzed by the non-profit European Public Health Alliance (EPHA), show the changing density of nitrogen dioxide, which can cause respiratory problems and cancer, like heat maps.

Daily weather events can influence atmospheric pollution, so the satellite pictures took a 20-day average and excluded readings where cloud cover reduced the quality of the data.

Data from the European Environment Agency (EEA) showed a similar trend over Mar 16-22. In Madrid, average nitrogen dioxide levels decreased by 56% week-on-week after the Spanish gov-ernment banned non-essential travel on Mar 14.

The EPHA said people living in polluted cities may be more at risk from COVID-19, because pro-longed exposure to bad air can weaken the immune system, making it harder to fight infection.

Air pollution can cause or exacerbate lung cancer, pulmonary disease and strokes. Countries that went into lockdown later - such as Britain, which did so on Mar 23 - look set for a pollution re-prieve in coming weeks, EPHA said.

Air pollution causes around 400,000 premature deaths each year in Europe, EEA data show.