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Rise in air pollution fuels antibiotic resistance, study suggests

By Grace van Deelen

Air pollution could be helping drive a rise in drug-resistant infections, which pose a dangerous threat to global public health, according to a new study.

The paper, published Monday in Lancet Planetary Health, concludes that particulate air pollution (PM2.5), which comes from burning fossil fuels for energy, industrial processes, and transportation, may be one of the largest contributors to the spread of antibiotic resistance worldwide. The link between the two phenomena has strengthened over time, according to the research.

“The benefits of controlling air pollution could be two-fold: not only will it reduce the harmful effects of poor air quality, it could also play a major role in combating the rise and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” said Hong Chen, the paper’s lead author and a professor of environmental science at Zhejiang University in China, in a statement.

The vast majority of the world’s population lives in areas where air pollution exceeds health standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO), meaning that they breath air containing high levels of pollutants, including PM2.5. Breathing polluted air raises the risk of premature death from heart disease, lung disease, stroke, and cancer affecting the lungs or airways. The Biden Administration has proposed multiple new policies to try to limit PM2.5, including tighter standards for soot pollution, new vehicle emissions standards, and improved reporting of air pollutants.

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More evidence linking air pollution to mental health problems, study finds

By Shannon Kelleher

Long-term exposure to a cocktail of common air pollutants, even at low levels, is associated with increased risk for depression and anxiety, according to a new study published this week.

The study, which followed more than 389,000 adults in the UK for more than a decade, adds to growing research examining the relationship between air quality and mental health, and supports calls from health and environmental advocates for urgent action to address air pollution.

People living in areas where the air contains higher levels of nitrogen dioxide and nitrogen oxides and other harmful particulate matter were at greater risk for being diagnosed with depression or anxiety over the course of the study. The nitrogen contaminants primarily get into the air from the burning of fuel, including from emissions produced by vehicles and power plants.

Notably, the results pointed to elevated anxiety and depression risk even at levels of air pollution considered acceptable by UK air quality standards, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Psychiatry,

“Our findings warrant that more strict air quality standards on a globe scale should be adopted based on the new [World Health Organization (WHO)] guidelines to alleviate the disease burden of depression and anxiety related to multiple air pollutants,” Jing Huang and Guoxing Li, researchers at the Peking University Health Science Center in China and two authors of the study, said in an email to The New Lede.

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