Two new studies revealed evidence that exposure to pollution could accentuate the risk of suffering from depression and raised alarms worldwide, due to the high concentration of smog that is registered in large cities around the entire planet.
The first investigation, published by the medical journal of the United States, Jama Psychiatryfollowed the behavior of some 390,000 people for 11 years in the United Kingdom and compared it with an estimate of the pollution to which they were exposed according to the location of their homes, concluding that “long-term exposure to multiple pollutants was associated with increased risk of depression and anxiety”.
The researchers studied the rates of fine particles (called PM2.5 and PM10), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and nitric oxide (NO), pollution caused in part by fossil fuel plants and vehicular traffic, according to the agency of news France Presseand added in that sense that “the observed risk is non-linear, that is, it grows strongly above a relatively low concentration level, and tends to stagnate afterwards”.
“Knowing that the air quality standards of many countries still far exceed the most recent recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) of 2021, stricter pollution standards or regulations should be established,” the authors of the work concluded.
The second work, published in the American monthly magazine Jama Network Open of biomedical sciences, focused on the effect of fine particles (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) in people over 64 years of age, with the aim of studying all the consequences of air pollution , on the development of late-onset depression. The results again showed the strong association between pollution and depression, in particular looking at the fluxes of fine particles and nitrogen dioxide, for disadvantaged populations.
The researchers used a database of Medicarea social and public security coverage program reserved for the elderly in the United States, and studied a population of about 8.9 million people, of whom 1.5 suffer from depression. This association could be explained by the relationship observed between high concentrations of pollutants and inflammation in the brain, according to the two studies examined.
“These works add to the growing number of elements that show that we should be concerned about the effects of pollution on mental health,” he said in this regard. Oliver RobinsonProfessor of Neurosciences and Mental Health at University College London, England, although without having directly participated in both investigations.
