Air Pollution Affects Mental Health for Children and Adults

There are a lot of recent studies about how air pollution can affect mental health – this is a huge impact on our well-being, and really affects us day-to-day. It affects children and adult mental health, and is more evidence about how clean energy and clean transportation will really improve our lives. We will summarize some of them here.

  1. Short-term increases in daily fine particle pollution (PM2.5) increased rates of children needing psychiatric emergency care visits at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinatti, even though all exposures including the spikes were below the EPA 24-hr PM2.5 standard of 35 μg/m3, and the median exposure level for 24-hr PM2.5 was 10.5μg/m3, far below the EPA standard. The most common disorders affected by PM2.5 were adjustment disorder, suicidality, and anxiety disorder.
  2. A study of multiple ages (151 million people in the U.S. and 1.4 million people in Denmark) found a link between long-term exposure poor air quality and bipolar and major depression. In the Danish part of the study, the exposure to poor air quality was in the first 10 years of life, but the effect on mental health persisted for years.
  3. A study in London of mostly adults found 18% increased risk of in-patient admission for higher exposures to nitrogen oxides (NOx), and 11% increased risk of in-patient admission for PM2.5. There was a 31% increase in use of community mental health services for higher exposures to NOx, 7% higher risk for PM2.5, and 9% increase for coarse particles (PM10).
  4. Another study from London found that those with the highest air pollution exposure at age 12 had 3-4 times increased likelihood of developing depression at age 18. This study looked at NOx and PM2.5.
  5. A study from Ottawa of adolescents and young adults (age 8-24 years) found a 1-2% increased risk of emergency department visits for mental health disorders on the same day or the day after a spike for NOx and PM2.5.
  6. A study from Cincinatti found that exposure to traffic-related air pollution in infancy and early childhood was linked to child-reported anxiety and depression when children are 12 years old.

    This shows more ways the #HealthyAirIsHealthCare.

Please call or write ALL your elected leaders, especially your senators, and tell them that we need clean air, clean energy, and clean transportation to be healthy and to truly thrive. Use our form or the phone numbers from it.

03/18/2022

#ActOnClimate #CleanAir