Air quality changes in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In December 2019, a new, severe coronavirus (COVID-19) appeared in Wuhan, China. Shortly after, the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in the United States. The emergence of this virus led many United States governors to enact executive orders in an effort to limit the person-to-person spread of the virus. One state that utilized such measures was New York, which contains New York City (NYC), the most populous city in the United States. Many reports have shown that due to the government-backed shutdowns, the air quality in major global cities improved. However, there has been only limited work on whether this same trend is seen throughout the United States, specifically within the densely populated NYC area. Thus, the focus of this study was to examine whether changes in air quality were observed in NYC resulting from New York State's COVID-19-associated shutdown measures. To do this, daily concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were obtained from 15 central monitoring stations throughout the five NYC boroughs for the first 17 weeks (January through May) of 2015-2020. Decreases in PM2.5 (36%) and NO2 (51%) concentrations were observed shortly after the shutdown took place; however, using a linear time lag model, when changes in these pollutant concentrations were compared to those measured during the same span of time in 2015-2019, no significant difference between the years was found. Therefore, we highlight the importance of considering temporal variability and long-term trends of pollutant concentrations when analyzing for short-term differences in air pollutant concentrations related to the COVID-19 shutdowns.

A simple, cost-effective, and novel method for determining the efficiency of industrial and commercial noise-canceling earmuffs.

CONTEXT: There are several ways to assess the noise reducing efficiency of earmuffs, but they usually involve using human participants and/or specialized equipment. OBJECTIVE: The current study was designed to develop a less labor-intensive, cost-effective, participant-free first-pass method for measuring the efficiency of earmuffs. METHODS: We evaluated the noise-cancelling ability of five different types of earmuffs (3M: Optime 98, Optime 105; iDEA USA V201; Tronsmart Encore S6; Bose QuietComfort 35) under laboratory and field conditions. We compared our results to the microphone-in-real-ear (MIRE) method. Lastly, a survey of college-aged students was also conducted to determine which earmuffs were the most comfortable and provided the best fit. RESULTS: Of the five earmuffs studied, the Optime 98 and Bose earmuffs were most effective at reducing noise levels in both the laboratory and field. These earmuffs also received the highest scores for comfort, fit, and perceived ability to reduce noise, with Bose being slightly more preferred than Optime 98. The MIRE method provided the same overall results as the laboratory and field tests. CONCLUSION: Our method for evaluating the noise-canceling ability of earmuffs could be used to supplement more complicated testing procedures as a first-pass method.