UCLA’s Michael Jerrett comments in the Los Angeles Times on study linking air pollution and COVID-19 death rates

Michael Jerrett (professor of environmental health science at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health) was quoted in the Los Angeles Times responding to a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health study suggesting that people who live in communities with long-term exposure to air pollution are at greater risk of dying from COVID-19.

Jerrett said the report is a “potentially important finding given that so many Americans and people all over the world live in areas with unhealthy pollution levels.” 

The story also cites a study of the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2003 conducted by UCLA researchers that found that infected patients from regions with higher air pollution were 84% more likely to die than those in less-polluted regions. 

Read more at The Los Angeles Times.