School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St. Andrews, Scotland, United Kingdom.
School of Medicine, University of St. Andrews, Scotland, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2022 Mar 9;17(3):e0264394. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264394. eCollection 2022.
Recent studies suggest an association between ambient air pollution and mental well-being, though evidence is mostly fragmented and inconclusive. Research also suffers from methodological limitations related to study design and moderating effect of key demographics (e.g., ethnicity). This study examines the effect of air pollution on reported mental well-being in United Kingdom (UK) using spatial-temporal (between-within) longitudinal design and assesses the moderating effect of ethnicity.
Data for 60,146 adult individuals (age:16+) with 349,748 repeated responses across 10-data collection waves (2009-2019) from "Understanding-Society: The-UK-Household-Longitudinal-Study" were linked to annual concentrations of NO2, SO2, PM10, and PM2.5 pollutants using the individuals' place of residence, given at the local-authority and at the finer Lower-Super-Output-Areas (LSOAs) levels; allowing for analysis at two geographical scales across time. The association between air pollution and mental well-being (assessed through general-health-questionnaire-GHQ12) and its modification by ethnicity and being non-UK born was assessed using multilevel mixed-effect logit models.
Higher odds of poor mental well-being was observed with every 10μg/m3 increase in NO2, SO2, PM10 and PM2.5 pollutants at both LSOAs and local-authority levels. Decomposing air pollution into spatial-temporal (between-within) effects showed significant between, but not within effects; thus, residing in more polluted local-authorities/LSOAs have higher impact on poor mental well-being than the air pollution variation across time within each geographical area. Analysis by ethnicity revealed higher odds of poor mental well-being with increasing concentrations of SO2, PM10, and PM2.5 only for Pakistani/Bangladeshi, other-ethnicities and non-UK born individuals compared to British-white and natives, but not for other ethnic groups.
Using longitudinal individual-level and contextual-linked data, this study highlights the negative effect of air pollution on individuals' mental well-being. Environmental policies to reduce air pollution emissions can eventually improve the mental well-being of people in UK. However, there is inconclusive evidence on the moderating effect of ethnicity.
最近的研究表明，环境空气污染与心理健康之间存在关联，但证据大多是零散且不确定的。研究还受到与研究设计和关键人口统计学因素（例如，种族）调节效应相关的方法学限制。本研究使用时空（个体内-个体间）纵向设计，在英国（UK）检验了空气污染对报告的心理健康的影响，并评估了种族的调节作用。
使用来自“理解社会：英国家庭纵向研究”的 60146 名成年人的数据（年龄：16+），这些数据在 10 个数据收集波次（2009-2019 年）中进行了 349748 次重复应答，将这些数据与年度浓度的 NO2、SO2、PM10 和 PM2.5 污染物进行了关联，这些污染物使用个体的居住地址进行关联，地址信息来自地方当局和更精细的Lower-Super-Output-Areas（LSOAs）级别；允许在时间上进行两个地理尺度的分析。使用多水平混合效应逻辑回归模型评估了空气污染与心理健康（通过一般健康问卷-GHQ12 进行评估）之间的关联，以及种族和非英国出生对其的修饰作用。
在 LSOAs 和地方当局级别，NO2、SO2、PM10 和 PM2.5 污染物每增加 10μg/m3，心理健康状况较差的可能性就会增加。将空气污染分解为时空（个体内-个体间）效应，结果显示存在显著的个体间效应，但不存在个体内效应；因此，居住在污染更严重的地方当局/LSOAs 对心理健康状况较差的影响大于每个地理区域内的空气污染随时间的变化。按种族进行分析，结果显示，只有对于巴基斯坦/孟加拉裔、其他族裔和非英国出生的个体，随着 SO2、PM10 和 PM2.5 浓度的增加，心理健康状况较差的可能性更高，而与英国白人或本地人相比则不然，但对于其他种族群体则没有这种情况。
本研究使用纵向个体水平和上下文相关联数据，强调了空气污染对个体心理健康的负面影响。减少空气污染排放的环境政策最终可以改善英国人民的心理健康。然而，种族的调节作用证据并不确定。
