Ambient air pollution and depressed mood in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) wave 4

Depression is a major contributor to the global burden of disease. There is limited understanding of how environmental exposures may contribute to depression etiology. We used wave 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine associations between low-level ambient air pollution exposure and depressed mood in a generally healthy population of over 10 000 24-32 year olds. Annual mean PM2.5 levels in the 2008-2009 study were close to the current US standard. In fully adjusted quasibinomial logistic regression models, there were no meaningful associations between IQR increases in air pollutant and change in depressed mood status regardless of specific pollutant or moving average lags. In interaction effects models, an IQR increase in lag day 0-30 PM2.5 resulted in 1.20 (95% CI, 1.02-1.41) times higher likelihood of having depressed mood but only for persons with chronic lung disease (interaction P = .04); the association was null for participants without chronic lung disease (OR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.91-1.05). Our findings suggest that among persons with a lifetime history of chronic lung disease, greater exposure to even low-level PM2.5, PM10, and sulfate may be associated with modest increases in the likelihood of having depressed mood. This article is part of a Special Collection on Environmental Epidemiology.