Air quality

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) undertakes regular monitoring of air

quality around the country and produces a measure called the Air Quality Index for

Health. Archived datasets are available from the EPA website but further exploration

would be required to assess the practicalities of linking to Growing Up in Ireland

households or local areas. A recent study linked health data from the Irish study of

aging (TILDA) to long-term air pollution data to examine associations with mental

health indicators collected as part of the survey. The authors (Lyons et al., 2024)

describe the linkage process as follows: “Data on annual average PM2.5 levels for

each of the years from 1998 to 2014 were sourced from a global database of PM2.5

levels at 1km-grid resolution. Because respondents in the TILDA survey supplied their

current and previous residential addresses, the research team could match annual

average PM2.5 data to each respondent and calculate a long-term (17-year) average

of PM2.5 levels in their locality.”. Higher than average levels of PM2.5 (fine

particulate matter) were associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety.

Distance to green (or blue) spaces