Air Pollution During the Strategy of COVID-19 Lockdown in Iraq

The COVID- 19 pandemic appeared at the end of 2019, and no vaccine was found against this disease until a year after this spreadation. The imposition of the lockdown was one of the most important strategies that governments applied to reduce COVID- 19 cases, which may have caused a change in air pollution when institutions and movements stopped. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate air pollution in Iraq before, during, and after the strategy, inferring the concentration of sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the atmosphere. The informed cases of COVID-19 in Iraq were gained from the World Health Organization (WHO), the times of the COVID-19 lockdown in Iraq were stated, and the SO2 emissions level in Iraq was obtained from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The emissions of SO2 were higher in the months of 2019 than its emission in the next year, when the pandemic lockdown applied and restriction of traffic movement occurred. The lockdown appears to be showing a clear improvement in air quality over Iraq.