 Air pollution is already killing 7 million people around the world, no matter what. We have to tackle the causes of air pollution. Welcome to World Versus Virus, a podcast from the World Economic Forum that aims to make sense of the COVID-19 outbreak. This week lockdown has meant cleaner air for hundreds of millions of people, but as economies around the world grind back into action, will that just become a distant memory? And what is the link between COVID-19 and air pollution? The two things are inextricably linked. Coronavirus can be carried on air pollution particles, which means it can be brewed very deeply into the lungs. The global expert on air pollution at the World Health Organisation tells us why it must seize this opportunity to clean up the air for our health and for the climate. It was like a laboratory where you could see what tackling the causes of climate change or air pollution will look like. And an opinion poll conducted across Europe, Africa and South Asia finds an overwhelming majority of people worried about air pollution and in favour of stricter action to cut it. This is a clear mandate for those politicians to make sure that the very least economic stimulus does not increase air pollution, at the same time a huge opportunity for it to do quite the opposite. Subscribe on Apple SoundCloud Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robin Pomoroy and this is World Versus Virus. In cities around the world, people were surprised to see how quickly the smog lifted when lockdown took vehicles off the road and closed factories. And scientists are finding another link between COVID-19 and air pollution. Evidence that people in more polluted areas are more susceptible to the disease. One of the reasons it's not the great social leveler that many people thought at first, but in fact it hits poorer people harder. In the UK, for example, Cambridge University's Medical Research Council toxicology unit found evidence that higher levels of some air pollutants correlated with increased COVID-19 mortality and spread. And in America, the head of Harvard University's Center for Climate Health and the Global Environment, Aaron Bernstein, said it was, quote, pretty clear that people who have been living in places that are more polluted over time are more likely to die from coronavirus, unquote. So I asked Maria Naira, Director of Public Health and Environmental Social Determines of Health at the World Health Organization here in Geneva, if we knew for sure that air pollution made it more likely for people to catch and to die from COVID-19. Obviously the correlation between exposure to air pollution and mortality by COVID-19, we need to do more to establish that correlation. So we cannot confirm that there is this correlation, but we cannot exclude it either. So more studies will be needed. What we know for sure is that air pollution is already killing 7 million premature, I mean, prematurely people around the world. Therefore, no matter what, I mean, we have to tackle the causes of air pollution. We have to, so the policy recommendation from all of those studies will be tackle the causes of air pollution, reduce air pollution, increase the quality of the air you breathe. And therefore, this is what I will call a non-regrets investment because we need to do it to reduce the 7 million that's in addition to that. And I hope that for the future now on the recovery that the countries are now investing on and putting a stimulus package on it, they will take consideration of the way we commute, the transport and the energy sources we use to make sure that this recovery will be greener and will be certainly not going back to the same levels of pollution that we had before the pandemic. That will be unacceptable. There's been a lot of talk about how inequality has played a role here. Poorer people are more vulnerable to this. Do you think air pollution is the main or one of the main contributory factors to that? Well, I would say that one of the main contributions of upgrading this inequities will be the fact that we are still dealing with diseases that require as the most important measure for prevention, people washing their hands. And to wash their hands, you need to have water, you need to have soap. So if you ask people living in conditions where soap is not available or water is not available, that's a major... I mean, the fact that we cannot execute this very, very basic public health measure, which means hygienic conditions and washing your hands is traumatic. The other one was as well the issue of keeping social distance and people staying at home. It's easy to say, stay at home for people who have a home. But if you don't, then you live in a very overcrowded environment. It's almost impossible to have this type of measure. And in addition to that, we saw that those cities where... And this is not necessarily poor environments. There were even very rich, big metropores around the world where the population has been exposed to air pollution. Obviously, the poorest part of that population will be more exposed because the traffic will be more intense and even the sources of the fuels were more polluted. Your lungs will be much more vulnerable and you will have an increased risk of any low-track respiratory infection. So the inequities are definitely related to all the environmental determinants of our health, access to safe water, access to food, access to hygienic conditions, access to housing and, of course, access to breathe clean air or the quality of air that will protect our health. People around the world have enjoyed much cleaner air. Do you think this will change attitudes and change policy? Or will the attitude be, we don't really care about air pollution or climate change, we just need to get back to work and get the economy going? Isn't that a risk? There are several options. One is that I think the proportion, I mean, the number of citizens that now we will join our call for better standards of air quality has increased because they saw what is possible, they enjoy it. And I think we have gained an important number of people now for making sure that we will keep that pressure on our politicians to make sure that they will take the best decisions. Second is that, of course, people will be now very sensitive about the economic recovery. And it's fair because we need to do an economic recovery. That's why we need to be very sensitive and use the narrative that is appropriate, proving that investing on this type of new, renewable sources of energy, clean sources of energy is a good economic investment as well, a very good economic investment. And that's why we need to use economic arguments as well for governments to say, okay, this economic recovery has to be a healthy and ring one. And the third issue is that we need to work on what has been the sustainable development path in the past where it has been demonstrated that there are plenty of economic advantages as well. The population is now traumatized after the coronavirus experience. So it's clear that talking to them and then tell them the next crisis will be climate change will be very inappropriate. We don't want to terrorize anyone. But they are very sensitive about, I need to make sure that my health will be better protected. So the narrative now is, okay, if you want your health to be better protected, if you want to reduce your vulnerability, first we need to have a biodiversity. We need to engage with our ecosystems on a more healthy way because otherwise your health will be a risk. And we need as well to protect you from the pollution that will make you more vulnerable to any type of respiratory virus that might come or bacteria that might come and put you again on a situation like this one. And third argument, in addition to that, there will be plenty of economic benefits for you at the short, medium and long term if we engage in this sustainable pattern for recovery, healthy and green recovery. Do you think it's easier to communicate the message about air pollution than it is to communicate about climate change? There've been a lot of big weather events in the last two or three years that would seem to indicate climate change, but still there is a fair amount of skepticism in certain populations, certain politicians. But air pollution, long disease, heart disease, is more direct and completely undeniable. Do you find that? Or is there also skepticism about this one day out on a polluted day, isn't gonna kill you, another cigarette won't kill you? How do you see the difference between campaigning on air pollution and campaigning on climate change? Climate change until now has been very difficult for the population to link that to their lungs, to your heart, to your problems or physical, I mean, health problems. But now we have the oblige, we simplify that message and say, okay, fossil fuels are bad for your health. At the same level that we say it for tobacco, tobacco is bad for your health, tobacco kills you, fossil fuels kills you. So we have simplified the message very much. Now with the COVID, I think we need to do even another step, which is until now we're saying, okay, if you tackle climate change, there will be benefits. Now is the other way around. We need to protect people's health. Therefore, one of the ways to protect people's health is to tackle the causes of climate change and to tackle the causes of air pollution, which many times they overlap particularly when it's about burning fossil fuels. So this is that the argument now is all about health. And this is an argument that now population is very open to that argument. So it's not just about polar bears, it's not just about the planet, the future and generations and environmental policies is about your lungs as well. And we used to say exactly that, the price of fossil fuels is paid by your lungs. And the price of not doing enough on the climate change negotiations is paid by your lungs, by your brain as well, because now we have plenty of evidence that that pollution is affecting your brain as well. Are you looking out for anything in the next six months, 12 months, two years to see whether the political attitudes have changed? Before the crisis, we were little by little seen mayors or governments trying to endorse WTO guidelines and standards on air quality. And that was a big achievement. What I would like to see now is this ambition to be definitely explosive. And I want the countries to endorse an energy transition plan as soon as possible. And I'm looking as well at how many mayors are now proposing different public transport options and promoting Milano, which is a very dense and active city. And they are now proposing to reduce dramatically the space for private cars and then dedicating it to biking or walking. So that could be an amazing and incredibly public health measure because this is what I'm telling every day to people working on transport and public transport, say you might not know it, but you are a ministry of health. And the same for mayors. You are the biggest minister of health that we can imagine because you can take the measures that will have an incredible impact. The ministers of energy, they are the ones who hold our health in their hands. If they take the right decision now on this energy transition, wow, that would be fantastic for our health. For sure, so I will push enormously for all of those stimulus packages to go in the right direction, to make sure that the healthy and green transition is in place and mobilizing the citizens for them to very strong political pressure on their politicians and mayors and then local authorities to do so. I was watching your TED talk and I like the way you started it. You get everyone in the audience to hold their breath for 10 seconds. Why do you do that? You want people to realize that this is not an intellectual thing or a scientist business. If there is something that we need to do permanently is breathing. Probably this experience is because when I was a very young doctor and I went to a refugee camp and I was the only doctor there, one of the things that terrified me more was that those very acute asthma attacks where you realize that when people cannot breathe, that the anxiety, the panic that you have is horrible and obviously it's transmitted to the doctor, particularly if he's a young, not very experienced one. For me it was really terrifying to see a child struggling to breathe, which is a basic function and if you don't breathe for a certain period of time, you die, I mean it's very simple. So looking at those children and even adults with that horrible difficulty to breathe, which is so basic, God keeps you thinking about how important it is more often than what we do every day, yes. I was speaking to Maria Nyra, Director of Public Health and Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at the World Health Organization. So will policy makers take all of that on board as their economies grind back into action? Will the great reset mean cleaner air, healthier people and reduced greenhouse gas emissions? A lot of that depends on public opinion and a survey of public opinion, five countries in Europe, Asia and Africa revealed a huge majority of people want tougher action to reduce air pollution. I spoke to the head of the Clean Air Fund, the organization that commissioned the study. I'm Jane Burstin, the Executive Director of the Clean Air Fund. We've just published a report today called Breathing Space about the links between COVID-19 and air pollution and how this particular moment in time, air pollution really needs to be tackled. So what we have here is an opinion poll done in five countries, Nigeria, Great Britain, Poland, Bulgaria and India. The survey asked people, about a thousand people in each of those countries what they thought about air pollution and what was the main finding? The main finding that I thought was most interesting was that people are incredibly supportive of additional legislation or stricter regulations of air pollution and stricter enforcement is one of the things that we've actually seen some governments do the opposite of either during lockdown or shortly after releasing relaxing environmental regulations. And it turns out people aren't supportive of that. In fact, quite the opposite. And did you see any differences across those five countries? I'm looking at the figures now. The question here, a percentage of people who are very or at least fairly worried about air pollution as a public health issue. Now the lowest number there is the United Kingdom but 71% still and the highest is Nigeria, 92%. The figures were highest in Nigeria and India and that's unsurprising given how bad the air pollution is in those places. I guess what is more surprising in those places is the high levels of awareness across the general public about how COVID-19 and air pollution are linked. People really understand that decades of exposure to high air pollution has left communities with very bad respiratory problems which makes them much more exposed to both getting and suffering badly from the coronavirus. The number of scientific studies that are coming out about the links between historical high air pollution in an area and then the current or very recent high levels of COVID-19 in an area are showing that the two things are inextricably linked. Scientists have also discovered that coronavirus can be carried on air pollution particles which means it can be breathed very deeply into the lungs. So definitely people are concerned aware of and concerned about that. And I think one of the other things that's changed now as we emerge from lockdown in many countries is that people have seen that change is possible. You can reduce air pollution literally overnight by up to a half, we saw 60% in New Delhi. People don't want to return to the polluted air of the past. I'm gonna read off some more statistics from the research here. The question is percentage of people who support stricter laws and or enforcement of regulations on air quality. Let's start with the lowest of those five countries, the UK again, but still 67% of people support stricter laws and or stricter enforcement of existing laws on air quality. In Poland, it's 72% of people in Bulgaria, 85, India 85%, and Nigeria 94%. We asked people what policies that they would best support increased amounts of an enforcement for legislation was one of them. Incentives for cleaner modes of travel, so cleaner vehicles, more public transport, more facilities for walking and cycling and also cleaner fuels for use in the home either for cooking or heating the home. So people are very keen to do things themselves, to change their behavior and to see incentives for those changes. We're also calling on governments to make sure that they link health and environment policies. Do you think the pandemic has given politicians now some support for what may have been unpopular laws in the past? Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot of planning going on around the world for how economic stimulus packages will be spent and what conditions will be attached to additional budget that's given to specific sectors or companies. This is a clear mandate for those politicians to make sure that at the very least, economic stimulus does not increase air pollution, but at the same time, a huge opportunity for it to do quite the opposite and decrease pollution to create much more resilience for individuals and countries in the health system. That was Jane Burston of the Clean Air Fund. For more on that opinion poll, go to www.cleanairfund.org slash breathing space. The World Economic Forum brings you a vast array of stories about COVID-19 and beyond. You can find it at weforum.org and on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube and on Twitter, where we use the handle at WEF. Thanks to Gareth Nolan for help producing this week's podcast. Please subscribe to get it every week. Just search World Versus Virus on Apple, SoundCloud, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening and see you next week.