ArticlePloS one2025
The impact of fine particulate matter on depression: Evidence from social media in China.
Article in PloS one, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Depression is a significant public health issue in China that imposes a heavy economic burden on society and families. Using a dataset of 8.54 million Weibo posts from 284 prefecture-level cities across China between 2016 and 2019, we calculate the depression tendency index for residents in each city. Using the weighting of pollutants in nearby cities as an instrumental variable, we apply the two-stage least squares method to estimate the impact of PM2.5 on depression. The findings reveal that (1) air pollution markedly influences residents' susceptibility to depression, and every 1 μg/m3 increase in the PM2.5 concentration results in a 0.0559% increase in the depression tendency value. (2) The influence of air pollution on residents' depression exhibits a distinct weekly pattern, with individuals in heating cities, on weekdays, and in lower-income brackets being more impacted. (3) Our analysis of healthcare expenditures affirms that China's environmental governance policies have yielded significant economic advantages. As mitigation strategies, we propose the adoption of air pollution evasion measures, persistent refinement and enforcement of air pollution regulatory policies to reduce environmental pollution-related damage, paying attention to groups at risk of depression and fostering a healthy society.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.