Developing a Framework to Assess the Impacts of Human Health on the Environment Within the Context of COVID-19 as a Global Natural Experiment

Abstract

The manifold effects of the COVID-19 pandemic include many changes to humanity's impact on the natural environment, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions from air travel and increased personal protective equipment (PPE) waste generation. The pandemic has served as a global natural experiment, revealing interactions between human health and the environment that were not clearly observable before. This research aims to develop a framework for systematically assessing the impacts of human health on the environment. This framework has been structured and populated from a review of the emerging literature on the documented environmental effects of the pandemic in addition to existing literature on environmental impacts of the health care sector in general. The framework tool catalogs observed and expected environmental effects in five stages of a public health crisis (the health issue, the medical response, the public health response, adaptation and rebound, and long-term effects) and five environmental impact categories (water pollution, solid waste, air pollution, global warming, and environmental degradation). The applicability of this framework is examined using two case studies: the 2003 SARS outbreak and the localized experience of COVID-19 in New York City. The application revealed that the framework is both transferable and scalable for use in assessing other human health crises. Overall, many of the beneficial environmental impacts that occurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic only came at the expense of widespread human suffering, and over time, many of these benefits were reversed. The goal is that this tool will be useful to understanding both the ways COVID-19 will continue to affect the environment as well as the effects of potential public health campaigns and crises in the future.