Air pollution benefits from reduced on-road activity due to COVID-19 in the United States

On-road transportation is one of the largest contributors to air pollution in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic provided the unintended experiment of reduced on-road emissions' impacts on air pollution due to lockdowns across the United States. Studies have quantified on-road transportation's impact on fine particulate matter (PM_2.5)-attributable and ozone (O₃)-attributable adverse health outcomes in the United States, and other studies have quantified air pollution-attributable health outcome reductions due to COVID-19-related lockdowns. We aim to quantify the PM_2.5-attributable, O₃-attributable, and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂)-attributable adverse health outcomes from traffic emissions as well as the air pollution benefits due to reduced on-road activity during the pandemic in 2020. We estimate 79,400 (95% CI 46,100-121,000) premature mortalities each year due to on-road-attributable PM_2.5, O₃, and NO₂. We further break down the impacts by pollutant and vehicle types (passenger [PAS] vs. freight [FRT] vehicles). We estimate PAS vehicles to be responsible for 63% of total impacts and FRT vehicles 37%. Nitrogen oxide (NO) emissions from these vehicles are responsible for 78% of total impacts as it is a precursor for PM_2.5 and O₃. Utilizing annual vehicle miles traveled reductions in 2020, we estimate that 9,300 (5,500-14,000) deaths from air pollution were avoided in 2020 due to the state-specific reductions in on-road activity across the continental United States. By quantifying the air pollution public health benefits from lockdown-related reductions in on-road emissions, the results from this study stress the need for continued emission mitigation policies, like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recently proposed NO standards for heavy-duty vehicles, to mitigate on-road transportation's public health impact.