Air Pollution A Factor behind Depression: Study
They also gave a hint that a link between exposure to toxic and polluted air might lead to increased risk of neuropsychiatric disorders as well.
One of the researchers of the study and computational biologist, Atif Khan told to PTI, “Our studies in the US and Denmark show that living in polluted areas, especially early in life, is predictive of mental disorders.”
The research published in the Journal PLoS Biology with the help of US insurance database comprising more than 150 million individuals with a clinical history of neuropsychiatric incidents related claims compared the claims of issues along with geo-location and the 87 potential air pollutants mentioned by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The result obtained from the comparison brought out that the countries with the most polluted air poised an increased rate of bipolar disorder by 27 per cent and also led to an increase of six per cent in cases of major depression.
Also, in an interesting yet shocking co-relation discovered by the researchers, they found that polluted soil is also a potential factor for personality disorder. Further, the researchers to back the study compared the data from other countries as well.
The researchers also analysed Danish national treatment registers with the help of Denmark researchers and analytically compared the data of around 1.4 million people born between 1979 and 2002.
The team cross-examined the prevalence of a neuropsychiatric disease among Danish adults who had lived in an environment with poor atmosphere and soil up to their tenth birthday.
The joint collaboration was able to achieve to make a correlation of the results obtained from the US and Denmark of the relationship between pollution and increased neuropsychiatric disease which suggested that there’s a 29 per cent increase in those disease in countries with poor air quality.
Further, the data obtained from Denmark also brought out that early childhood exposure to the poor environment leads to an increase of 50 per cent in major depression, 148 per cent increase in schizophrenia, and 162 per cent increase in personality disorders as compared to individuals living in better environmental conditions.
