Air pollution’s unexpected consequence: Mood swings

Mental health challenges also linked to higher temperatures and trauma from extreme weather

People walk through a hazy Central Park in New York on June 7, 2023 after smoke from Canada's wildfires engulfed the Northeast. Fluctuations in air pollution can negatively impact people’s mood on a day-to-day basis, a new study revealed (AFP via Getty Images)

In a bad mood, but don’t know why? Air pollution could be the answer, a new study reveals.

Breathing polluted air can cause mood swings and changes, as well as increase the risk of long-term mental health impacts, according to a new study led by a team at Stanford University. Their research reveals that a person’s mood fluctuates with day-to-day changes in air pollution.

The researchers dubbed this finding, “affective sensitivity to air pollution.” The study relied on repeated sampling from 150 people over one year.

The study helps further explain earlier research that link heightened anxiety and depression to long-term air pollution exposure, the team said. The researchers hope their findings will bring more attention to the impacts of the climate crisis on human health and wellbeing.

“This new construct can be leveraged to better integrate affect and mental health in climate adaptation policies, plans, and programs,” the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS One on Wednesday, reads.

People walk through a hazy Central Park in New York on June 7, 2023 after smoke from Canada’s wildfires engulfed the Northeast. Fluctuations in air pollution can negatively impact people’s mood on a day-to-day basis, a new study revealed (AFP via Getty Images)

Events driving air pollution, such as destructive wildfires, will only increase in intensity and frequency as the human-driven climate crisis worsens.

Climate researchers have already established links between mental health and the climate crisis. Two years ago, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced they would begin including the impacts of climate on mental health in their reports.

Their findings revealed that mental health challenges can be linked to trauma from extreme weather and climate events. The panel also said high temperatures, loss of livelihoods, and loss of culture due to the climate crisis negatively impacts mental health.

“We are also seeing cascading and compounding impacts where we see, for example, the fires in the black summer in Australia followed by floods and followed by other extreme events,” co-author Kathryn Bowen said of the 2022 report.

Air pollution isn’t just a threat to mental health. 135 million people have died in the last four decades from air pollution, a recent study from the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore revealed.

Along with increasing air pollution, the climate crisis caused 2023 to be the hottest year on record. This year is set to beat that record as extreme temperatures affecting communities around the world.

Rising temperatures have also contributed to warming oceans, which is driving a destructive and record-breaking hurricane season in the Atlantic. Researchers predicted some 23 named tropical storms and hurricanes will form through November.

In June, Hurricane Beryl wreaked heavy destruction across the Caribbean after strengthening to the earliest-recorded Category 5 storm due to unprecedented ocean temperatures.