We have always heard that exposing ourselves to or frequenting environments that present air pollution (pollution of the air we breathe) can have consequences on our health, mainly because polluted air contains toxic substances, for example; carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, methane, nitrogen monoxide, ozone, chlorofluorocarbons, and it has been shown, that these substances affect our respiratory system by deteriorating the pulmonary system, leading to the subsequent onset of diseases such as asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, and lung cancer.

On this occasion, and with the aim of socializing descriptive environmental information, I wanted to share with the members of the community @ecoTrain some scientific deductions, made in the current context of pandemic, by comparing the high air pollution presented by some eco-regions, and its relationship with increased infections and deaths from COVID-19.

As I mentioned at the beginning, it is known that air pollution causes delicate and persistent inflammatory responses in humans, which increases the risk of pathogenic infection mainly by virus, which is why specialists in the field of deterioration of wild ecosystems, ensure that the microorganism identified as COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2 whose clinical manifestations of a respiratory nature are of fatal incidence, its behavior is more virulent in industrialized countries, essentially due to the high levels of air pollution that have already been reported in the main cities of these countries, where people do not breathe clean air, and therefore are at greater risk of contracting the Coronavirus, and therefore record the highest incidences of deaths.

It is important to point out that not only industrialized countries are extremely affected by COVID-19, since in the case of countries or eco-regions, where high levels of air pollution have been reported as a result of forest fires, as in the case of Brazil, the main Amazon country with the largest area affected by forest fires, or countries with a long history of livestock and agriculture, whose set of practices prescribes large discharges of methane gas and carbon dioxide into the environment, is another variable, which undoubtedly also creates atmospheric imbalances, and thus promotes vulnerability to multiple respiratory diseases associated with the attack of these viruses.

If we analyze the context of the current pandemic, and its correlation with industrialized countries, or those that certify air pollution problems, it is clear that we will find the largest cases of infections and deaths by COVID-19, hence, it is not simply a matter of getting to this point, to realize the serious impact that has meant not acting and stop air pollution, but also, these brief and modest lines seek a space for reflection, and start taking action from the individual, to have an impact from the collective.

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