Children with elevated exposure to early life stress in the home and elevated prenatal exposure to air pollution exhibited heightened symptoms of attention and thought problems, according to researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia Psychiatry. Early life stress is common in youth from disadvantaged backgrounds who also often live in areas with greater exposure to air pollution.
Air pollution has negative effects on physical health, and recent work has begun to also show negative effects on mental health. Life stress, particularly early in life, is one of the best-known contributors to mental health problems. The new study is one of the first to examine the combined effects of air pollution and early life stress on school-age children. Results appear in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
“Prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a neurotoxicant common in air pollution, seems to magnify or sustain the effects of early life social and economic stress on mental health in children,” says first author David Pagliaccio, PhD, assistant professor of clinical neurobiology in psychiatry at Columbia Psychiatry.
“Air pollutants are common in our environment, particularly in cities, and given socioeconomic inequities and environmental injustice, children growing up in disadvantaged circumstances are more likely to experience both life stress and exposure to neurotoxic chemicals,” says senior author Amy Margolis, PhD, assistant professor of medical psychology in psychiatry at Columbia Psychiatry.
Read more at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health
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