TUESDAY, Sept. 17, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- As wildfires continue to burn across parts of California, a new study finds that smoke from these blazes and other air pollution could be harming kids’ mental health. Repeated exposure to high levels of particle pollution increases kids’ risk of depression, anxiety and other mental health symptoms, researchers reported.
What’s more, each additional day of exposure to unsafe air significantly boosted the likelihood that a youngster would suffer mental health problems. “We need to understand what these extreme events are doing to young people, their brains and their behavior,” said lead investigator Harry Smolker , a research associate with the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science. For the study, researchers analyzed data from 10,000 kids ages 9 to 11 participating in an ongoing study of brain development.
Using the participants’ addresses, they calculated how many days in 2016 each kid was exposed to particle pollution levels the Environmental Protection Agency considers unsafe. Some studies have found that these airborne particles could be small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier and affect the brain. These particles have a diameter of less than 2.
5 micrometers; by comparison, a human hair is about 50 micrometers in diameter. Adult hospital admissions for depression, suicide and psychosis tend to increase on high pollution days, researchers said in background notes. When pregnant women a.