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Jon.

Air pollution in China & Italy plummets following lockdown

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Air pollution levels have dropped by roughly a quarter over the last month as coal-fired power plants and industrial facilities have ramped down so employees in high-risk areas can stay home. Levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant primarily from burning fossil fuels, were down as much as 30%, according to NASA.

"It is an unprecedentedly dramatic drop in emissions," says Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, who tallied the reductions. "I've definitely spoken to people in Shanghai who said that it's been some of the most pristine blue skies that they remember over the winter."

 

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The European Space Agency (ESA) said it had observed a particularly marked decline in emissions of nitrogen dioxide, a noxious gas emitted by power plants, cars and factories, over the Po Valley region in northern Italy.

“Although there could be slight variations in the data due to cloud cover and changing weather, we are very confident that the reduction in emissions that we can see coincides with the lockdown in Italy causing less traffic and industrial activities,” Claus Zehner, who manages the agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite mission, said in a statement.

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