ArticlePloS one2022
Air pollution and individuals' mental well-being in the adult population in United Kingdom: A spatial-temporal longitudinal study and the moderating effect of ethnicity.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Determinants and relationships of climate change, climate change hazards, mental health, and well-being: a systematic review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Revisiting 'environmental effects': Directions for multidisciplinary investigations of air quality and psychopathology.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2026Article
- The relationship between air pollution and police officers' mental health: an empirical analysis based on spatial econometric models.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Finding the link of acculturation: the impact of perceived neighbourhood-level residential environment on mental health among rural-to-urban migrants in China.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Housing Insecurity and Older Adults' Health and Well-Being in a Gentrifying City: Results from the EPIPorto Cohort Study.Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Long term exposure to ambient air pollution and hospital admission burden in Scotland: 16 year prospective population cohort study.BMJ open · 2024Article
- Article
- The spatial-temporal effect of air pollution on individuals' reported health and its variation by ethnic groups in the United Kingdom: a multilevel longitudinal analysis.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundRecent 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.
methodsData 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.
resultsHigher 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.
conclusionUsing 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.
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