Unfortunately I can't access this article through my institution, but I remember about a year or so ago doing a short literature review on this topic while having an online discussion about why it...
Unfortunately I can't access this article through my institution, but I remember about a year or so ago doing a short literature review on this topic while having an online discussion about why it would be good to build better public transit and bike infrastructure. That was more so in the context of things like lung cancer, but it's no surprise at all that there would be impacts on mental health (and just as a quick aside, as a materialist in the philosophical sense, it seems quite obvious that things that affect our bodies will affect our minds).
It's abundantly clear that we are doing massive damage to ourselves through the amount of pollution we generate, but the issue is that it doesn't always manifest in obvious ways that would make a clear connection to the cause. People don't just start hacking up a lung or feeling depressed immediately, it's this gradual process of death by a thousand cuts as we throw countless challenges at our bodies. Whether it's through air particulates, micro-plastics in our food and water, or the downstream effects of those - we really need to try to steer this ship off it's current course. This is obviously easier said than done as so much of our current standard of living, particularly in the global North and in efforts to develop in the global South, revolves around these means that produce all this pollution. This isn't to say that alternative options are completely waste and detriment free, but they certainly seem a lot more alluring than the status quo.
Unfortunately I can't access this article through my institution, but I remember about a year or so ago doing a short literature review on this topic while having an online discussion about why it would be good to build better public transit and bike infrastructure. That was more so in the context of things like lung cancer, but it's no surprise at all that there would be impacts on mental health (and just as a quick aside, as a materialist in the philosophical sense, it seems quite obvious that things that affect our bodies will affect our minds).
It's abundantly clear that we are doing massive damage to ourselves through the amount of pollution we generate, but the issue is that it doesn't always manifest in obvious ways that would make a clear connection to the cause. People don't just start hacking up a lung or feeling depressed immediately, it's this gradual process of death by a thousand cuts as we throw countless challenges at our bodies. Whether it's through air particulates, micro-plastics in our food and water, or the downstream effects of those - we really need to try to steer this ship off it's current course. This is obviously easier said than done as so much of our current standard of living, particularly in the global North and in efforts to develop in the global South, revolves around these means that produce all this pollution. This isn't to say that alternative options are completely waste and detriment free, but they certainly seem a lot more alluring than the status quo.