Environmental impact of COVID-19 pandemic: more negatives than positives

Ankit,; Kumar, Amit; Jain, Vartika; Deovanshi, Ankit; Lepcha, Ayush; Das, Chandan Jyoti; Bauddh, Kuldeep; Srivastava, Sudhakar

doi:10.1007/s42398-021-00159-9

Cited by 51 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Soaps can harm aquatic vegetation. Plants such as Ranunculus aquatilis and Potamogeton cannot thrive in detergent concentrations of 2.5 ppm (Ankit et al 2021 ). The accumulation of toxic chemicals in the soil resulting from widespread soap use may degrade soil quality.…”

Section: Impacts Of Covid-19 On Aquatic Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the environment, waste management, and energy sectors: a deeper look into the long-term impacts

Mohamed

Fattah

Yousaf

et al. 2022

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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The COVID-19 pandemic not only has caused a global health crisis but also has significant environmental consequences. Although many studies are confirming the short-term improvements in air quality in several countries across the world, the long-term negative consequences outweigh all the claimed positive impacts. As a result, this review highlights the positive and the long-term negative environmental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by evaluating the scientific literature. Remarkable reduction in the levels of CO (3 − 65%), NO 2 (17 − 83%), NO x (24 − 47%), PM 2.5 (22 − 78%), PM 10 (23 − 80%), and VOCs (25 − 57%) was observed during the lockdown across the world. However, according to this review, the pandemic put enormous strain on the present waste collection and treatment system, resulting in ineffective waste management practices, damaging the environment. The extensive usage of face masks increased the release of microplastics/nanoplastics (183 to 1247 particles piece −1 ) and organic pollutants in land and water bodies. Furthermore, the significant usages of anti-bacterial hand sanitizers, disinfectants, and pharmaceuticals have increased the accumulation of various toxic emerging contaminants (e.g., triclocarban, triclosan, bisphenol-A, hydroxychloroquine) in the treated sludge/biosolids and discharged wastewater effluent, posing great threats to the ecosystems. This review also suggests strategies to create long-term environmental advantages. Thermochemical conversions of solid wastes including medical wastes and for treated wastewater sludge/biosolids offer several advantages through recovering the resources and energy and stabilizing/destructing the toxins/contaminants and microplastics in the precursors. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-022-20259-1.

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Section: Impacts Of Covid-19 On Aquatic Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the environment, waste management, and energy sectors: a deeper look into the long-term impacts

Mohamed

Fattah

Yousaf

et al. 2022

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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“…The COVID-19 pandemic has had both positive and negative impacts on the environment. 33 Ecological resilience is defined as 'a measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state variables'. 34 In this case, the slowdown of human activities during lockdowns led to a reduction of their impact on nature.…”

Section: Resilience In Different Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building a multisystemic understanding of societal resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic

et al. 2021

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The current global systemic crisis reveals how globalised societies are unprepared to face a pandemic. Beyond the dramatic loss of human life, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered widespread disturbances in health, social, economic, environmental and governance systems in many countries across the world. Resilience describes the capacities of natural and human systems to prevent, react to and recover from shocks. Societal resilience to the current COVID-19 pandemic relates to the ability of societies in maintaining their core functions while minimising the impact of the pandemic and other societal effects. Drawing on the emerging evidence about resilience in health, social, economic, environmental and governance systems, this paper delineates a multisystemic understanding of societal resilience to COVID-19. Such an understanding provides the foundation for an integrated approach to build societal resilience to current and future pandemics.

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“…Initially, these policies are hailed as reviving the degraded environmental matrices due to reduced anthropogenic activities (VishnuRadhan et al 2020), leading to reports of improved air (Mahato et al 2020) and water (Selvam et al 2020) quality in formerly polluted regions. The environmental benefits, if any, were short-lived, and recent reports showed an increase in air pollution post-lockdown (Wang et al 2020) and more negative impacts than positives (Kumar et al 2021). The re-emergence of higher pollution levels is a likely scenario for the other environmental realms, too.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the emergence of a health-pollutant-climate nexus in the wake of a global pandemic

VishnuRadhan

Thresyamma

Eldho

et al. 2021

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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COVID-19 has wreaked havoc throughout the planet within a short time frame, inducing substantial morbidity and mortality in the global population. The primary procedures commonly used to manage the pandemic can produce various environmental pollutants, primarily contaminants of emerging concern such as plastics, chemical disinfectants, and pharmaceutical waste. There is a huge influx of various environmental pollutants due to the pandemic effect. We, therefore, introduce the term “envirodemics” depicting the exacerbated surge in the amount of pandemic-induced pollutants. The general toxicity pattern of common chemical ingredients in widely used disinfectants shows negative impacts on the environment. We have identified some of the significant imprints of the pandemic on localizing the Sustainable Development Goals—environment interaction and their implications on achieving the goals in terms of environmental benefits. Climate change impacts are now widespread and have a profound effect on pollutant fluxes and distribution. The climate change signatures will impact the pandemic-induced enhanced fluxes of pollutants in the global waters, such as their transport and transformation. In this study, possible interactions and emerging pathways involving an emerging climate-health-pollutant nexus are discussed. The nexus is further elaborated by considering plastic as an example of an emerging pollutant that is produced in huge quantities as a by-product of COVID management and disaster risk reduction. Additionally, regulatory implications and future perspectives concerning the unleashed nexus are also discussed. We hope that this communication shall call for incisive investigations in the less explored realm concerning the health-pollutant-climate nexus.

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Environmental impact of COVID-19 pandemic: more negatives than positives

Cited by 51 publications

References 62 publications

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the environment, waste management, and energy sectors: a deeper look into the long-term impacts

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the environment, waste management, and energy sectors: a deeper look into the long-term impacts

Building a multisystemic understanding of societal resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic

On the emergence of a health-pollutant-climate nexus in the wake of a global pandemic

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