Author: Sujata Gupta / Source: Science News
Air pollution is recognized as public health threat in China, linked to heart disease, cancer, cognitive decline and even risky behavior.
Now a study analyzing air quality data and social media posts on China’s version of Twitter suggests that poor air quality may also harm people’s sense of well-being.“The higher the levels of air pollution in Chinese cities, the lower people’s happiness,” says Siqi Zheng, an environmental and urban economist at MIT and coauthor of the study published January 21 in Nature Human Behaviour.
To reach that conclusion, Zheng and colleagues first developed a daily “happiness index” that looked at a population’s overall mood in each of 144 Chinese cities. The researchers gauged these moods using two word analysis programs on a total of 210 million social media posts appearing in March–November 2014 on the platform Sina Weibo.
The researchers then compared their happiness findings with daily levels of airborne particles measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, or PM2.5, as reported by authorities. The analysis revealed a link between poor air quality and lower overall mood. This finding held true even after eliminating posts containing words that explicitly referred to pollution.
The researchers were also able to show how other variables, such as the weather or the day of the week, affected a population’s overall mood.
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