Abstract
Aim
Although extensive research has been conducted on the potential relationship between air pollution and residents’ health in China, and few studies examine the potential impact of air pollution in Chinese cities on cognition and its impact mechanism.
Subject and methods
Using nationally representative data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this study discusses the potential impact of exposure to air pollution on Chinese residents’ memory and the mediating effect of health, thereby filling the gaps in the literature. The highlights of this study are as follows: (1) the use of a ventilation coefficient and environmental regulations as instrumental variables and (2) the use of a two-stage least squares (2SLS) model to solve the potential endogeneity problems caused by air pollution and memory, which may be mutually causal or fail to control more dependent variables.
Results
The findings revealed that exposure to air pollution might adversely affect memory. With other control variables unchanged, a 1-μg/m3 increase in particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) decreased the memory score by 0.274 (95% CI: –0.361 to –0.188). The impact of air pollution on memory was partly indirect through physical rather than mental health. The mediating effect of self-rated health was −0.00667, which accounted for 2.430% of the total product.
Conclusion
This study provides suggestions for avoiding memory loss, maintaining health, and formulating policies based on changing air quality in the future.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the Institute of Social Science Survey, Peking University repository, https://doi.org/10.18170/DVN/45LCSO .
Notes
Self-rated health1: In the CFPS, the survey question is “What do you think of your health?” Respondents are prompted to select five alternatives based on their level of health state. Respondents were asked to choose from one of five categories in the 2010 survey: healthy, fair, slightly unhealthy, unhealthy, and extremely unhealthy. These were altered to be exceptionally healthy, very healthy, generally healthy, fair, and unhealthy in the surveys from 2012, 2014, and 2016. In this study, “healthy” is represented by 3 (corresponding to the healthy category in the 2010 questionnaire and the extremely healthy and very healthy categories in 2012, 2014, and 2016 questionnaires), “fairly healthy” is represented by 2 (corresponding to the appropriate category in the 2010 questionnaire and the relatively healthy and fair categories in 2012, 2014, and 2016 questionnaires), and “unhealthy” is represented by 1 (corresponding to the relatively unhealthy, unhealthy, and very unhealthy categories in the 2010 questionnaire and the unhealthy category in 2012, 2014, and 2016 questionnaires). Self-rated health2: “How do you feel about your health status compared to a year ago?” is the survey question in the CFPS. Respondents are prompted to choose from three alternatives based on their level of health status. In the surveys from 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, respondents were asked to choose between the three categories better, no change, or worse. In this study, 3, 2, and 1 stand for “better,” “no change,” and “worse,” respectively.
Mental health score: There are five frequency measurement possibilities in questionnaires: “nearly every day,” “frequently,” “half the time,” “sometimes,” and “never.” 2012 and 2016 were the other 2 years, with “nearly none (less than a day),” “occasionally (1–2 days),” “frequently (3–4 days),” and “most of the time (5–7 days)” being the new categories. We use 3 to represent “healthy,” which corresponds to “never” in 2010 and 2014 and “almost none” from the questionnaires from 2012 and 2016. We use 2 to represent “fairly healthy,” which corresponds to “often,” “half the time,” and “sometimes” in 2010 and 2014, and “sometimes” from the questionnaires from 2012 and 2016. We use 1 to denote “unhealthy,” which corresponds to “nearly every day” in the years 2010 and 2014, as well as “frequently” and “most of the time” in the surveys from 2012 and 2016.
Sickness: This indicator is determined by the respondent’s recent 2-week history of illness. We use the numbers 1 to indicate “not sick” and 0 to indicate “sick.” Chronic illness: This indicator is based on whether the respondents received a medical diagnosis of a chronic illness within the previous 6 months. We denote “no” by 1 and “yes” by 0.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) team for providing data and the training of using the dataset.
All authors have agreed to publish.
All the authors have agreed to the submission of this paper.
China Family Panel Studies (CFPS); Two-stage least squares (2SLS); Particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 2.5 μm (PM2.5); World Health Organization (WHO); National Advisory Mental Health Council (NAMHC); Nitrogen dioxide (NO2); Particulate matter with particles below 10 microns (PM10); Carbon monoxide (CO); Ozone (O3); Sulfur dioxide (SO2).
Availability of data and material
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the Institute of Social Science Survey, Peking University repository, https://doi.org/10.18170/DVN/45LCSO.
Code availability
Not applicable.
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at the following URL/DOI: www.isss.pku.edu.cn/.
Funding
This work was supported by funds from National Natural Science Foundation of China (serial number of grant: 72273011).
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ZY contributed study design. ZY and XZ conducted all data processing, analyses, and initial drafting. JL, GZ, and LF contributed to the interpretation of the results. GZ, LF, and CL were involved in the study supervision. All authors contributed in drafting the manuscript and revision. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The CFPS study has been ethically approved by the Peking University Biomedical Ethics Review Committee (approval no. IRB00001052-14010), and all participants signed informed consent forms.
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The study uses a secondary source of data, and informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the survey while the survey data was collected.
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Yang, Z., Qi, Y., Song, Q. et al. Association between exposure to air pollution and memory: the mediating effect of health. J Public Health (Berl.) 32, 1023–1037 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-023-01875-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-023-01875-8