Ambient Air Pollution and COVID-19 in California

This report, available for downloading below, presents a study led by Michael Kleeman at the University of California, Davis. Kleeman and colleagues evaluated associations between estimated outdoor air pollution concentrations and risk of COVID-19 disease, COVID-19 disease progression or recovery, deaths due to COVID-19, and long COVID- 19 conditions among a study population in Southern California.

Key takeaways:

• Increased risk of COVID-19 death was associated with estimated annual average exposures to ultrafine particulate matter, fine particulate matter, and several specific components of fine particulate matter; however, findings on associations between ozone exposure and COVID-19 death in the administrative and healthcare system datasets were inconsistent.
• Exposures to several pollutants were also associated with progression from hospitalization to more severe COVID-19 illness and with several long COVID-19 outcomes.