ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Environmental Health and Exposome
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1610330
The Hidden Toll of Air Pollution: Mental Health Effects on Middle-Aged and Elderly Individuals
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan Province, China
- 2University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom
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Nowadays, depression disorders are increasingly recognized as a major public health challenge. We investigate the impact of air pollution on the mental health of the middle-aged and elderly.Our findings imply that a one 𝜇g/m 3 increment in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) increases the scores of Centers for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) by 0.0313, indicating a deterioration in mental health. Air pollution has a large detrimental effect on the mental health of older adults, females, and the widowed. Regarding the influencing channels, air pollution exposure is found to significantly deteriorate sleep quality, reduce life satisfaction, worsen individual cardiopulmonary health status, and impede cognitive competence. We find suggestive evidence that increasing individual access to pollution information and greening up the city effectively mitigate the unavoidable impacts of air pollution on mental health. This study underscores the critical public health and economic implications of addressing air pollution's mental health impacts, particularly among vulnerable groups, which is essential for developing effective interventions and policies to mitigate the escalating socioeconomic consequences of climate change in aging societies worldwide.
Keywords: Air Pollution, Mental Health, older adults, CHARLS, Vulnerable groups
Received: 14 Apr 2025; Accepted: 11 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zou, He and Lu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Haoyang Lu, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom
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