Air pollution and suicide in rural and urban America: Evidence from wildfire smoke

David Molitor, Jamie T. Mullins () and Corey White ()
Additional contact information
Jamie T. Mullins: c Department of Resource Economics , University of Massachusetts , Amherst , MA 01003
Corey White: e IZA Institute of Labor Economics , 53113 Bonn , Germany

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023, vol. 120, issue 38, e2221621120

Abstract:

Air pollution poses well-established risks to physical health, but little is known about its effects on mental health. We study the relationship between wildfire smoke exposure and suicide risk in the United States in 2007 to 2019 using data on all deaths by suicide and satellite-based measures of wildfire smoke and ambient fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) concentrations. We identify the causal effects of wildfire smoke pollution on suicide by relating year-over-year fluctuations in county-level monthly smoke exposure to fluctuations in suicide rates and compare the effects across local areas and demographic groups that differ considerably in their baseline suicide risk. In rural counties, an additional day of smoke increases monthly mean PM 2.5 by 0.41 μg/m 3 and suicide deaths by 0.11 per million residents, such that a 1-μg/m 3 (13%) increase in monthly wildfire-derived fine particulate matter leads to 0.27 additional suicide deaths per million residents (a 2.0% increase). These effects are concentrated among demographic groups with both high baseline suicide risk and high exposure to outdoor air: men, working-age adults, non-Hispanic Whites, and adults with no college education. By contrast, we find no evidence that smoke pollution increases suicide risk among any urban demographic group. This study provides large-scale evidence that air pollution elevates the risk of suicide, disproportionately so among rural populations.

Keywords: air pollution; mental health; suicide; wildfire smoke; environmental economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2221621120 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nas:journl:v:120:y:2023:p:e2221621120

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Eric Cain ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).