Air quality and health: lessons learned from COVID

The responses to the COVID-19 pandemic halted nearly all the industrial, business and transportation sectors worldwide, with immediate, unintended effects on different environmental reservoirs, including the atmosphere. Although the large body of scientific studies that emerged in the wake of the pandemic proved that good air quality is not far-fetched, it also highlighted the remaining challenges demonstrating that some results are elusive and conflicting. This side event discusses the strategies that have emerged from these studies and unmasks why reducing the emission of the burning of fossil fuels –as widely advocated– may curtail but not completely eradicate the exposure to air pollution and puts this in the context of the future health impacts considering connection between pollution and climate changes.