Long-term exposure to air pollution may lead to higher risk of depression later in life, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The study was published in JAMA Network Open on February 10. Co-authors included Xinye Qiu and Yaguang Wei, postdoctoral research fellows in the Department of Environmental Health; Laura Kubzansky, professor of social and behavioral sciences and director of the Society and Health Laboratory; Edgar Castro, doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health; Marc Weisskopf, professor of environmental epidemiology and physiology; and Joel Schwartz, professor of environmental epidemiology.
Little research has been conducted about air pollution and mental health conditions among senior citizens. To fill this gap, the researchers studied the health claims of more than 8.9 million people older than 64 and enrolled in Medicare, then zeroed in on diagnoses of depression and average yearly exposure to air pollutants based on zip code.
Late-life depression should be a geriatric issue that the public and researchers need to be paying more attention to, like on a similar level with Alzheimer’s and other neurological conditions, there’s no real threshold [for exposure to air pollution], so it means future societies will want to eliminate this pollution or reduce it as much as possible because it carries a real risk.