The study found that living in an environment with poor air quality for a long time can lead to depression and anxiety.

CTOnews.com February 2 news, from Peking University, Oxford University and Imperial College London joint research team recently published a paper in the authoritative journal "American Medical Association Psychiatry Journal", said that human long-term living in poor air quality environment, can lead to depression and anxiety.

Researchers tracked the incidence of depression and anxiety among nearly half a million British adults over the past 11 years and found that people living in areas with higher levels of air pollution were also more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety.

The researchers used data from 389185 participants from the UK Biobank to model and score air pollution based on information such as PM2.5 and PM10, nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide in the area where they lived. Over a follow-up period of approximately 11 years, 13131 cases of depression and 15835 cases of anxiety were identified in their sample.

CTOnews.com learned from the report that air pollution was positively associated with cases of depression and anxiety. This means that in areas where air pollution is more severe, cases of depression and anxiety are also increasing.

"Given that air quality standards in many countries remain well above WHO's latest Global Air Quality Guidelines for 2021, future policy development should implement stricter air pollution control standards or regulations," the researchers wrote.