Researchers find long-term exposure to even relatively low levels raises risk of depression and anxiety
Long-term exposure to even comparatively low levels of air pollution could cause depression and anxiety, according to a study exploring the links between air quality and mental ill-health.
Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry, the researchers, from the universities of Oxford and Beijing and Imperial College London, said their findings suggested a need for stricter standards or regulations for air pollution control. Air pollution has long been implicated in a number of respiratory disorders but, the researchers noted, a growing body of evidence is establishing a link with mental health disorders. So far, however, the only available studies on the risk of depression were carried out in regions with air pollution concentrations exceeding UK air quality limits.
As air pollution increased, the researchers found, so did cases of depression and anxiety. Exposure-response curves were non-linear, however, with steeper slopes at lower levels and plateauing trends at higher exposure, suggesting that long-term exposure to low levels of pollution were just just as likely to lead to diagnoses as exposure to higher levels.
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