The Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB), a government entity that develops the model building code for all provinces and territories in Australia, is in the process of updating its Indoor Air Quality Verification Methods Handbook to reflect the latest scientific evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Roy Harrison, a researcher and professor at the University of Birmingham, UK, recently conducted a study to review the reductions in PM 2.5 and NO2 levels that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns over 11 cities. Harrison applied machine learning techniques to remove the effects of weather on the gaseous concentrations to see how the air quality had truly changed due to the lockdowns. 

A recent study by the University of Leeds and the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen divulged PM2.5 had only a small reduction across China and it was not lowered at all in Northeast China. The PM2.5 reduction of 11% across China was disappointing in comparison to the reduction 27% of NO2 across China.  

More and more we are seeing results from recent studies showing a correlation between higher COVID-19 death rates and people who live in air pollution riddled areas. Both in Italy and the United States, people that reside in areas with higher concentrations of PM2.5 in the atmosphere are at least 12% more likely to not survive a bout with COVID-19. These findings are consistent with the findings from the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak that claimed 349 lives in China. 

UC Davis Air Quality Research Director, Dr. Tony Wexler, looked into what role aerosols play in the transmission of coronavirus particles with colleagues William Ristenpart (UC Davis), Nicole Bouvier (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai), and Sima Asadi (UC Davis).

Reviewing the brief knowns on aerosol transmission of particles and earlier research on other coronavirus', they argue

that speech plausibly serves as an important and under-recognized transmission mechanism for COVID-19.

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic earlier this month causing industries across the world to shutdown and workers to stay home to avoid further contamination and spreading of the virus. This emergency shutdown has lead to lower air pollution levels around the world. 

Experts are saying that this societal shutdown is creating one of the largest experiments in industrial emission reduction. NO2 levels over cities and industrial areas have decreased significantly in comparison to this same time in 2019.