Exposure to unhealthy levels of air pollution during pregnancy may prolong postpartum depression symptoms in new mothers, according to new research.
A team of researchers from the University of Southern California assessed the air quality in the communities of more than 350 pregnant women across Greater Los Angeles from 2015 to 2023. The researchers then tracked the women’s mental health for up to three years after they gave birth.
Scientists found that the women who were exposed to higher levels of nitrogen dioxide and inhalable particulate pollution — two prevalent forms of air pollution — during their second trimester were nearly four times as likely to experience depression up to three years after their pregnancy.
Poor air quality has been identified as one of several factors associated with postpartum depression, a serious mental health condition often associated with intense feelings of sadness and difficulty bonding with a newborn.
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The new research highlights the need for mental health screenings beyond the 12-month postpartum period, according to study co-author Tracy Bastain, an associate professor of clinical population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. It also suggests women may need to be particularly vigilant about minimizing their exposure to air pollution when they are four to six months pregnant.
“There’s a lot of changes in pregnancy that happen to a woman’s body as she is getting ready to prepare her body for delivery,” Bastain said. “There are changes in heart rate, in blood volume, and in respiration — all of these types of physiological changes occur because there’s a body that’s growing inside of her body. And because of that, we think of this [second trimester] period of pregnancy as potentially a vulnerable period for environmental exposures, including air pollution.”
The USC study joins a growing body of research linking air pollution to depression, anxiety, cognitive decline, and other neurological conditions. The findings underscore the importance of studying air quality more broadly as it relates to health.
“Air pollution was traditionally thought of as a type of exposure that impacts the lung,” Bastain said. “But over the last couple of decades, I think there’s been realization and acknowledgment that air pollution has much larger systemic effects. And one of those areas that began to be investigated in the 2010s were effects directly on the brain.”
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by Tony Briscoe, Los Angeles Times (TNS)
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