ArticlePLoS biology2019
Environmental pollution is associated with increased risk of psychiatric disorders in the US and Denmark.
Article in PLoS biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 63 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
63 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 195 citations in OpenAlex.
- Specificity of environmental risk factors for schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, and depressive disorders - umbrella review.Psychological medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Air pollution, depressive and anxiety disorders, and brain effects: A systematic review.Neurotoxicology · 2022Pooled it
- Environmental Risk Factors for Bipolar Disorders and High-Risk States in Adolescence: A Systematic Review.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2020Pooled it
- The Relationship between Air Pollution Exposure, Genetic Liability for Schizophrenia, and Brain Outcomes in the ABCD Study.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2026Article
- From Air to Brain: Environmental Nanoparticles as Modifiable Risk Factors for Neurodevelopmental, Neurodegenerative, and Mental Disorders.ACS omega · 2026Review
- US State Policy Contexts and Mental Health Among Working-Age Adults.The Milbank quarterly · 2026Article
- Exposure to Air Pollutants and Lewy Body and Parkinson Disease-Related Dementias.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Prenatal environmental risk for adolescent attention, thought, and substance use problems: A mixtures approach to coexposure and psychiatric comorbidities.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2025Article
- Urban mental health: a position paper of the European psychiatric association.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2025Review
- Climate Change and Prevention - Review of Prevention Indicators of the German Federal States in Relation to 'Climate Change and Health'.Journal of health monitoring · 2025Article
- Perspectives of family medicine residents on artificial intelligence for survival estimation in patients with serious illness.PLOS digital health · 2025Article
- Recent findings and future directions for the intersection of genetic and environmental contributions to schizophrenia.Genomic psychiatry : advancing science from genes to society · 2025Article
- The independent role of fine particulate matter and genetic liability on cognition in older adults.Annals of general psychiatry · 2025Article
- Air Pollution Exposure, Prefrontal Connectivity, and Emotional Behavior in Early Adolescence.Research report (Health Effects Institute) · 2025Article
- Proteomic Biomarkers as Mediators in the Association Between Air Pollution and Incident Depression and Anxiety: Evidence From the UK Biobank.Depression and anxiety · 2025Article
- Article
- Mechanistic insights regarding neuropsychiatric and neuropathologic impacts of air pollution.Critical reviews in toxicology · 2024Review
- Article
- The Association between Exposure to Fine Particulate Air Pollution and the Trajectory of Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors during Late Childhood and Early Adolescence: Evidence from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.Environmental health perspectives · 2024Article
- Dissecting heritability, environmental risk, and air pollution causal effects using > 50 million individuals in MarketScan.Nature communications · 2024Article
3 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The search for the genetic factors underlying complex neuropsychiatric disorders has proceeded apace in the past decade. Despite some advances in identifying genetic variants associated with psychiatric disorders, most variants have small individual contributions to risk. By contrast, disease risk increase appears to be less subtle for disease-predisposing environmental insults. In this study, we sought to identify associations between environmental pollution and risk of neuropsychiatric disorders. We present exploratory analyses of 2 independent, very large datasets: 151 million unique individuals, represented in a United States insurance claims dataset, and 1.4 million unique individuals documented in Danish national treatment registers. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) county-level environmental quality indices (EQIs) in the US and individual-level exposure to air pollution in Denmark were used to assess the association between pollution exposure and the risk of neuropsychiatric disorders. These results show that air pollution is significantly associated with increased risk of psychiatric disorders. We hypothesize that pollutants affect the human brain via neuroinflammatory pathways that have also been shown to cause depression-like phenotypes in animal studies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.