key: cord-0865446-9dwxaxps authors: Singh, Ajit; Bartington, Suzanne E.; Song, Congbo; Ghaffarpasand, Omid; Kraftl, Martin; Shi, Zongbo; Pope, Francis D.; Stacey, Brian; Hall, James; Thomas, G. Neil; Bloss, William J.; Leach, Felix C.P. title: Impacts of emergency health protection measures upon air quality, traffic and public health: Evidence from Oxford, UK() date: 2021-11-26 journal: Environ Pollut DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2021.118584 sha: 3f57815eab062379f5cdd39d92d9d0c4f6eb2f8e doc_id: 865446 cord_uid: 9dwxaxps Emergency responses to the COVID-19 pandemic led to major changes in travel behaviours and economic activities in 2020. Machine learning provides a reliable approach for assessing the contribution of these changes to air quality. This study investigates impacts of health protection measures upon air pollution and traffic emissions and estimates health and economic impacts arising from these changes during two national ‘lockdown’ periods in Oxford, UK. Air quality improvements were most marked during the first lockdown with reductions in observed NO(2) concentrations of 38% (SD ± 24.0%) at roadside and 17% (SD ± 5.4%) at urban background locations. Observed changes in PM(2.5,) PM(10) and O(3) concentrations were not significant during first or second lockdown. Deweathering and detrending analyses revealed a 22% (SD ± 4.4%) reduction in roadside NO(2) and 2% (SD ± 7.1%) at urban background with no significant changes in the second lockdown. Deweathered-detrended PM(2.5) and O(3) concentration changes were not significant, but PM(10) increased in the second lockdown only. City centre traffic volume reduced by 69% and 38% in the first and second lockdown periods. Buses and passenger cars were the major contributors to NO(2) emissions, with relative reductions of 56% and 77% respectively during the first lockdown, and less pronounced changes in the second lockdown. While car and bus NO(2) emissions decreased during both lockdown periods, the overall contribution from buses increased relative to cars in the second lockdown. Sustained NO(2) emissions reduction consistent with the first lockdown could prevent 48 lost life-years among the city population, with economic benefits of up to £2.5 million. Our findings highlight the critical importance of decoupling emissions changes from meteorological influences to avoid overestimation of lockdown impacts and indicate targeted emissions control measures will be the most effective strategy for achieving air quality and public health benefits in this setting. Year period a third national lockdown was implemented from 5 th January 2021 55 (UKHSA, 2021). Air pollution is a major global public health concern, responsible for approximately 7 Demographic data for health impact assessment was obtained from the Office for The 'rmweather' package in the R programming tool was used for RF modelling and (Table 1) . 221 In addition, for each air pollutant we calculated the 'detrended' percentage change (P* 222 = P2020 -P2016-2019) ( Table 1) (Figures 2 and S1 )a greater difference than that observed and P2020 = 6.3 ± 0.5% respectively) (Figure 4 and Table 1) . 394 The detrended results also showed a significant reduction in NO2 concentrations 395 during the first lockdown period at both roadside (P* = -22.2 ± 4.4 %) and urban 396 background (P* = -2.0 ± 7.1%) locations, but with a smaller reduction than the 397 corresponding deweathered concentrations (Table 1) always smaller than the corresponding deweathered changes (Figure 4 and Table 1) . 403 There were no significant changes in detrended NO2 concentrations at either roadside 3.0 ± 18.0 52.0 ± 19.0 PM10 (DeW)-Urban background -9.1 ± 9.5 -12.5 ± 7.8 3.2 ± 12.2 6.3 ± 0.5 1.3 ± 0.7 5.0 ± 0. 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Science of The Total 902 ☒ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.☐The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f