A man wears a mask on the smoke-shrouded Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Australia, on Dec. 19, 2019. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)

 
In an overview of links between the COVID-19 pandemic and air quality, the European Environment Agency's (EEA) annual report released here on Monday noted "a possible role for air pollution in increasing susceptibility to COVID-19."

The EEA's Air Quality in Europe-2020 report recognized that long-term exposure to air pollutants caused cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, which are risk factors for death in COVID-19 patients, but noted "causality is not clear and further epidemiological research is needed."

The new EEA analysis is based on the latest official air quality data from more than 4,000 monitoring stations across Europe in 2018.

Photo taken on Jan. 9, 2019 shows the smog-shrouded city of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. (Xinhua/Nedim Grabovica)

 
According to the EEA's press release, earlier assessments showed up to 60 percent reduction of certain air pollutants in many European countries where lockdown measures were implemented in the spring of 2020.

However, the report also showed that pollution remains at dangerously high levels in some areas with nearly all Europeans suffering from some kind of effect from air pollution which still accounts for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths across the continent annually.

"Exposure to fine particulate matter caused about 417,000 premature deaths in 41 European countries in 2018," said the report.

Nevertheless, a marked improvement in Europe's air quality over the past decade has seen premature deaths, due to fine particulate matter pollution, fall by 60,000 in a decade.

For nitrogen dioxide pollution, a similar decline in premature deaths has also been recorded between 2009 and 2018, by approximately 54 percent.

"The EEA's data prove that investing in better air quality is an investment for better health and productivity for all Europeans," said Hans Bruyninckx, EEA's Executive Director, in the press release.

An old couple walk on a street in Paris, France, Nov. 16, 2020. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)