Wildfire Smoke Exposure Boosts Risk of Mental Illness in Youth

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by ScienceDaily.

Each additional day of exposure to wildfire smoke and other extreme forms of dirty air boosts the risk of mental illness in youth a little more, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder study of 10,000 9 to 11-year-olds.

“We found that a greater number of days with fine particulate air pollution levels above EPA standards was associated with increased symptoms of mental illness, both during the year of exposure and up to one year later,” said first author Harry Smolker, a research associate with CU’s Institute of Cognitive Science.

The study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, comes as smoke from Southern California fires blankets much of the West, thickening skies as far away as Las Vegas and parts of Colorado. While annual average air quality has generally improved in recent decades due to limits on emissions from combustion engines, more frequent fires have created a new problem: more days with severe levels of tiny particles of burnt things — a.k.a. particulate matter — in the air.

While scientists have known for years that air pollution can harm lung and heart health, they’ve only recently begun to explore its impact on cognition and behavior.

Smolker’s study is among the first to look at potential impacts on adolescents, whose brains are still developing.

The team analyzed data from 10,000 pre-teens participating in the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study — the largest long-term study of brain development and child health ever conducted in the United States. CU Boulder is one of 21 ABCD research sites.

When looking at parent questionnaires at four time points over three years, the researchers found that, across both genders, each additional day of exposure at unsafe levels boosted the likelihood of a youth having symptoms of depression, anxiety and other “internalizing symptoms” up to one year later.

While particulate matter can emerge from many sources, including traffic and industry, study co-author Colleen Reid, a geographer with the Institute for Behavioral Science at CU Boulder, suspects that most of the exposures in the study were due at least in part to wildfire smoke.

“Wildfire smoke events are becoming more and more common, and this study adds to a growing body of evidence that they can impact our health,” Reid said.

Source: ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/09/240912135646.htm