Dirty air means more kids hospitalized for suicide and schizophrenia, study finds
Alarming new research has linked air pollution to a spike in children’s trips to emergency rooms for psychiatric problems, ranging from suicide and anxiety to schizophrenia.
On days when kids were more exposed to harmful fine particulate matter (or PM2.5) in the air, kids’ ER trips for schizophrenia were “significantly” higher that same day in Ohio’s Hamilton County, according to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and University of Cincinnati researchers.
That trend continued in the days after a spike in pollution: children’s ER hospitalizations for psychiatric issues such as adjustment disorder, mood disorders and suicidality rose in the one or two days following heightened levels of air pollution, the authors wrote Wednesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
“This study is the first to show an association between daily outdoor air pollution levels and increased symptoms of psychiatric disorders, like anxiety and suicidality, in children,” Cole Brokamp, a researcher in Cincinnati Children’s Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, said in a statement. “More research is needed to confirm these findings, but it could lead to new prevention strategies for children experiencing symptoms related to a psychiatric disorder.”
Outdoor air pollution — everything from gases to trace metals — is responsible for an estimated 3.3 million early deaths each year, the researchers said.
This study honed in on PM2.5 fine particulate matter specifically because of its “size, composition, and ability to induce inflammation and oxidative stress” and its possible impacts on the central nervous system, according to the study.
The study analyzed 13,176 ER visits from a total of 6,812 kids over five years.
The researchers said “the study also found that children living in disadvantaged neighborhoods may be more susceptible to the effects of air pollution compared to other children, especially for disorders related to anxiety and suicidality.”
And it didn’t even take high levels of pollution to see a spike in ER trips, the authors said, writing that “notably, all daily (pollution) exposures within our study domain were below the National Ambient Air Quality Standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”
Brokamp said the research is “contributing to a growing body of evidence that no level of air pollution is safe,” Inverse reported.
Scientists said Wednesday’s research is one of three recent studies to highlight newfound links between kids’ mental health and dirtier air.
Another study, published in Environmental Research, “found an association between recent high traffic related air pollution (TRAP) exposure and higher generalized anxiety,” researchers said. A third, published in the same journal, revealed that TRAP exposure in early childhood is “significantly associated with self-reported depression and anxiety symptoms in 12 year olds.”
Taken together, the findings all suggest “exposure to air pollution during early life and childhood may contribute to depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems in adolescence,” Patrick Ryan of Cincinnati Children’s, one of the lead authors on the first study, said in a statement.
While pollutants from cars, power plants and other sources may be more common in urban areas such as Los Angeles or rapidly developing countries such as China and India, the global nature of pollution makes it a tricky problem, the researchers said.
“Since there are so many sources, you could potentially live in the middle of nowhere with nothing around you, but there still could be air pollution floating in from other parts of the country and even across the world around you,” Brokamp said, according to Inverse. “It’s everywhere at all times, but there’s hotspots based on where you are.”
This story was originally published September 27, 2019 at 12:58 PM with the headline "Dirty air means more kids hospitalized for suicide and schizophrenia, study finds."
