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Years of fine-particle pollution track with childhood ADHD rates across US counties

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Years of fine-particle pollution track with childhood ADHD rates across US counties

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Air quality across the country has improved greatly over the decades, as shown in Environmental Protection Agency reports. These improvements are good news overall, but lingering effects of past air pollution still raise health concerns for many people. UT researchers Alex Bentley and Larisa Ozeryansky co-authored a paper published in September in Scientific Reports. It explores the strong association between measures of fine-particulate air pollution (called PM 2.5) in the United States and the prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children years later.

"This is the first study to identify a significant association between long-term air pollution exposure and childhood ADHD prevalence across U.S. counties over a generational timescale," said Bentley, a professor in the Department of Anthropology and director of the Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity.

Bentley and Ozeryansky both teach public health topics in their respective colleges. Ozeryansky is a teaching assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition and Public Health Sciences of the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences.

The researchers combined new county-level ADHD prevalence estimates published in 2023 with a detailed record of air pollution and other county-level variables going back years. The data offered an unprecedented opportunity to examine the long-term relationship between air pollution exposure and childhood ADHD prevalence.

"We have annual, county-scale air-pollution data going back to the early 2000s and county-scale ADHD rate data, published in 2023 for the first time," said Bentley.


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