What are we trying to do?
We want to find out whether air pollution has an impact on people’s mental health. 

 

Why is this important?
There is evidence to suggest that air pollution can negatively impact people’s mental health. However, current studies on this topic generally only explore the long-term effects, don’t measure pollution precisely, and don’t account for other factors that could have an effect.

 

To increase our knowledge, we need to measure pollution precisely by location and compare it directly with people’s mental health in the same areas to find out whether pollution has an impact on mental health. If it does, the additional evidence would emphasise the need to reduce air pollution in residential areas.

 

How are we doing it?
We are using information from the UK Air Information Resource to find the level of air pollution in 32,844 small areas in England, with each area containing 400 to 1,200 households.

 

We will combine this with mental health data from the UK Household Longitudinal Survey, which is completed by around 30,000 households per year. 

 

Once analysed, the results will confirm whether or not air pollution in the local area has an impact on people’s mental health. 

 

Findings
We expect findings to become available in spring 2026. 

 

Contact information
 

 

 

Senior Programme Lead
 

Mike Spence
Michael.spence@manchester.ac.uk