From University of Utah Health Sciences viua Eurekalert; I suppose it’s only a matter of time where somebody will publish a study saying that a 50ppm increase in CO2 causes more suicides. I wonder how they explain Seattle, which is 8th in the nation in clean air, or those hotbeds of air pollution, Wyoming and North Dakota.
Cheyenne Wyoming has the cleanest air of any U.S. City
Study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found increased risk of suicide associated with short-term air pollution exposure
A new study from the University of Utah is adding to the small, but growing body of research that links air pollution exposure to suicide.
In research published today in The American Journal of Epidemiology, investigator Amanda Bakian, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah, and her colleagues outline chemical and meteorological variables that are risk factors for suicide. Their study, titled “Risk assessment of air pollution and suicide,” examines how those factors play out among different genders and age groups. The findings build on other research by Bakian released in April 2014, when she found that fine particulates and nitrogen dioxide in air pollution are linked with an increased risk for suicide.
In the latest study, Bakian and researchers found an increased risk of suicide associated with short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter among Salt Lake City residents who died by suicide between 2000 to 2010. In particular, men and Salt Lake City residents between 36 to 64 years of age experienced the highest risk of suicide following short-term air pollution exposure.
“We are not exactly sure why risk of suicide was higher in these two groups but suspect that it might be because these two groups were either exposed to higher levels of air pollution or that other additional factors make these two groups more susceptible to the effects of air pollution,” said Bakian.
Bakian examined the records of more than 1,500 people who died by suicide in Salt Lake County between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2010, and found that the odds of completing suicide were 20 percent higher for people exposed to increased levels of nitrogen dioxide in the two to three days before their deaths. Similarly, individuals exposed to high concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the two to three days before a suicide experienced 5 percent higher odds of suicide. Research found the risk was highest during the spring and fall –not the winter months when inversions are most common.
Data from the records also revealed that men experienced a 25 percent increase in the odds of suicide following short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide and a 6 percent increase in the odds of suicide following short-term exposure to fine particulate matter. In addition, the odds of suicide in people between the ages of 36 to 64 increased by 20 percent following short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide and 7 percent following short-term exposure to fine particulate matter.
“As suicide risk was found to differ by age and gender, this suggests that vulnerability to suicide following air pollution exposure is not uniform across Salt Lake County residents and that some Salt Lake County residents are more vulnerable than others,” said Bakian. “Our next step is to determine in more detail exactly what elements–such as genetic and sociodemographic factors –are responsible for increasing one’s vulnerability to suicide following air pollution exposure.”She is careful to point out that the research doesn’t state that bad air causes suicide. While the study doesn’t prove that air pollution causes someone to commit suicide, it suggests that higher levels of pollution might interact with other factors to increase the risk for suicide, she noted.
###
Bakian’s research was funded in small part through seed grant funding distributed last year by the University of Utah’s Program for Air Quality, Health and Society. The program awarded $165,000 to six researchers to perform research aimed at understanding and addressing the consequences of Utah’s air pollution on human health and welfare. In addition to representatives from the Program for Air Quality, Health and Society, the research was conducted by investigators from the University of Utah Department of Psychiatry, the Brain Institute, the Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC), Veterans Integrated Service Network 19 (VISN 19) and Intermountain Health Care. Study co-investigators include Rebekah Huber, Hilary Coon, Douglas Gray, Phillip Wilson, William McMahon and Perry Renshaw.
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So after the Clean Air Act took effect, the suicide rate in Britain dropped. Far fewer men found with their head in the gas oven and a note saying “I can’t stand this air any more. I have to end it all. Goodbye, filthy world.”
I often felt like committing suicide while sitting around the camp fire, especially during row – row – – row your boat.
funny, must be the song that does it..
my mum threatened me with assisted suicide aka murder for practicing that on my trumpet:-)
(she coulda taken out the music teacher for me woulda been smarter:-0)
The more that, once-venerated, academic institutions scream “Give us da money” by publishing political-propaganda that ticks the “It’s worse than we thought” box, the further they distance themselves from the world of trust and common-sense that they so desperately appear to place themselves in!
RIP, one-venerated , academic institutions.
President Eisenhower, despite his comparative, lowly academic status, nailed it in 1961!
RIP, General.
As an afterthought, it is indeed truly amazing that, whereas, environmental concerns, regularly, hit the positions of least relevance with respect to multiple polls, this study elevates it to a major factor in suicides.
The conclusion, that may be sensibly drawn, is that opinion polls are worthless OR this study is a crock of s***.
I’m loathe to fall down on either side but ….
And these are the “educated”. Nothing like turning from science to superstition. Every area of climate /environmental science has become a joke. I’d rather buy a car from a greasy haired salesman in a velour track suit adorned with requisite gold chains than listen to one “climate scientist “. I would sooner believe the former over the latter.
Shouldn’t there be a high coincidence with kerosene heaters and these suicide inducing gasses? What about us farmers, in diesel equipment for 12 hours or better at a stretch?
It seems that they should have discovered a mechanism, by which inhalation of NO2 induces the will to end one’s own life before this claim would be plausible to make. Besides, did these suicidal folks all wear air analyzers, or are we all being tracked so they can tell what sampling station you were close to at any juncture? So how can they claim an analysis of the amount of pollution they were exposed to?
Maybe drawing correlation between pollution and women bearing autistic children would get me some cash for a week of searching and selecting favorable statistics. Oh, I forgot… I’m not in that club.
Let me guess, the EPA funded this ‘research’?
This whole thing is becoming so laughable if it was not so sad ( but to all of you with the funny/sarc/cynical comments i can tell you. You raised my endorphin levels greatly, … (And prevented me from suicide (not really),… oh could there be a study and money there?)
“Middle-aged men at highest risk of suicide after breathing poor air”
The key-word is “poor”.
Epidemiology, whose practitioners fight with eachother over the “cake of death”,
shows that by far the biggest factors which shortens lifespan are poverty and social isolation.
Socio-economic status and social connectedness literally slice DECADES off your lifespan.
But these don’t make headlines since they are not new.
Instead epidemiology focuses on such things as:
the few seconds of life that radiation exposure MAY reduce your life (if you believe the models)
the few minutes you may lose due to eating peanut butter or the wrong kind of margarine
the few hours you might lose due to air quality or CO2 (again if you believe the models)
the few days or weeks you lose from cigarette smoking
etc..
“Poor air” is what you breath in places where poor people live.
Talking of epidemiology –
slightly OT but this was interesting in the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21641277-rise-anti-vaccine-sentiment-has-put-everyone-risk-vaccines-and-vacuous-starlets
People about to commit suicide are nervous. They smoke a lot 2 to 3 days before suicide. So high exposure to nitrogen dioxide and PM 2.5. Check the records of non-smoker suicides.
My theory is that men who work in blue collar industrial towns are more liable to permanently lose their livelihood when the warmies use green tape or carbon pricing to render their industry uneconomic. Hence people in cities with dirty air are more at risk of suicide for economic factors.
People about to commit suicide are depressed and tend to stay indoors 2 to 3 days before suicide.
According to the EPA, our indoor environment is two to five times more toxic than our outdoor environment, and in some cases, the air measurements indoors have been found to be 100 times more polluted.
Yes clean air is missing in many places and might causes effects. BUT the Real problem for Worlds future Clean Water problem
Dr. Strangelove
“People about to commit suicide are depressed and tend to stay indoors 2 to 3 days before suicide.”
==================
People commit suicide because (i) they are in an extremely dissatisfied state, and, for whatever reasons (right or wrong), (ii) they can’t envision a future in which things are going to improve.
That’s the intractable fact that psychiatrists, psychologist, social workers and big pharmaceutical companies will never say, because it doesn’t pay.
e.g.:
==================
Sir George Mackenzie, the Lord Advocate, at the time when witch-trials were so frequent, and himself a devout believer in the crime, relates, in his “Criminal Law,” first published in 1688, some remarkable instances of it.
He says, “I went, when I was a justice-depute, to examine some women who had confessed judicially: and one of them, who was a silly creature, told me, under secrecy, that she had not confessed because she was guilty, but being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch, she knew she should starve; for no person thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her and set dogs at her; and that, therefore, she desired to be out of the world; whereupon she wept most bitterly, and upon her knees called God to witness to what she said.”
[…]
Another author, also a firm believer in witchcraft, gives a still more lamentable instance of a woman who preferred execution as a witch to live on under the imputation. This woman, who knew that three others were to be strangled and burned on an early day, sent for the minister of the parish, and confessed that she had sold her soul to Satan. “Whereupon being called before the judges, she was condemned to die with the rest. Being carried forth to the place of execution, she remained silent during the first, second, and third prayer, and then, perceiving that there remained no more but to rise and go to the stake, she lifted up her body, and, with a loud voice, cried out,
“Now all you that see me this day, know that I am now to die as a witch, by my own confession, and I free all men, especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of my blood. I take it wholly upon myself. My blood be upon my own head. And, as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently, I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child. But, being delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of a witch, disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of ever coming out again, I made up that confession to destroy my own life, being weary of it, and choosing rather to die than to live.”
http://www.econlib.org/library/Mackay/macEx10.html#Ch.10,%20The%20Witch%20Mania
===============
Suicide is a conditional response to a perceived future of unremitting misery.
But that kind of common sense doesn’t pay very well.
They forgot the last paragraph and I even sent it to them all edited and everything!
“In summary, combined with the previous well-researched connection between the aging of the population and the rise in stupid scientists studying global warming, it is verified that higher rates of suicide are caused by older and wiser humans drinking too much in response to the increasing numbers of stupid scientists. Recommendations related to reducing the number of stupid scientists obtaining grants to study global warming will be forthcoming, to include the present researchers hereto attached.”
I am gobsmacked! GOBSMACKED that they didn’t include the final paragraph!
A psycholocial study on Epidemiology of course has to include asthma, suicide. … – whatever calls the topics ‘air pollution, individual traffic’ etc.
Next step of escalation:
searching for the correlation between body mass index BMI and cars coloring.
A new sidekick on the automotive industry.
ridicolous? When socialised in a ridicolous ‘environment’?
Regards – Hans
A psycholocial study on
Epidemiology of course has to
include asthma, suicide. … –
whatever calls the topics ‘air
pollution, individual traffic’ etc.
Next step of escalation:
searching for the correlation
between body mass index BMI
and cars coloring.
OBESITY.
A new sidekick on the
automotive industry.
ridicolous? When socialised in
a ridicolous ‘environment’?
Regards – Hans
Janice Moore,
re: your counter-factual rant above.
1) A pharmaceutical company in pursuit of a blockbuster “diet pill” to inhibit appetite (“munchies“) in fatties developed a molecule to block endo-cannabinoid receptors. The trial of the patented product was abruptly ended when all the volunteers grew morbidly depressed, with one or two in the small sample committing suicide.
2) M Simon’s life-affirming post was correct. He’s evidently done plenty of research on the topic, unlike you.
3) Everything you said in your addendum was false. Anesthetic alcohol is never “healthful” in any dose: it significantly increases cancer incidence, precipitates aggression and violence, and destroys neurons at a staggering rat, leaving it’s victims depressed, increasingly stupid, then bewildered, then incapable of recognizing the damage done (anasognosia), spouting word-salad or confabulating (Korsakoff’s syndrome), while killing more people, in the end, than any other drug. In contrast, not a single death has ever been attributed to weed (evah!), which, contrary to all that propaganda you imbibed, is an effective anti-cancer agent and a neuro-protectant (see U.S. government patent # 6630507). It even shrinks lung cancer (cough), with no deleterious effects observed in moderate users, according to peer-reviewed studies (cough).
4) A society that burns people for using a life-enriching therapeutic plant in their pursuit of happiness is not much better than a society that burns witches for dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight.
Well done reply. While I can’t stand smoke in my lungs and I can’t handle the “seasoned” taste of the stuff in brownies, I am all for its medicinal use and don’t care if people use it for recreational use. Chemical drugs are nasty compared to pot and I am not a nosy neighbor. As I age and possibly lose my appetite and get shorter and skinnier, please somebody figure out how to put it in red wine and/or bitter sweet chocolate so I have enough of an appetite to eat enough to age well into my frail years.
Most of the states noted on the graph are cold and snowy in the winter. Could the results show that being trapped in the house with their nagging wife drove them over the edge? 😉
This may be the first article I have ever seen where women and minorities were not hardest hit
From personal experience over many years, I can affirm they do have something of a case with No2. It’s probably the most ‘moreish’ substance you can abuse. suicide by No2 – or death y misadventure from N02 are both very well represented in the ‘scores’ In fact a ‘right to decide’ euthanasia information group tha once had a very complicated set of methodologies now recommend No2 as number one of five best ways to peacefully and calmly leave the stage.
This may well be reflected in the middle-aged men figures, especially since catalytic converters made the old tube in the exhaust method chancy, when a man decides to go there he is usually serious about things not ‘crying for help’
I doubt casual or chance exposure to a lungful of No2 is likely to send you down that path though…
Are you speaking of NO2 or N2O???
Frank Kotler
February 14, 2015 at 6:14 pm
Are you speaking of NO2 or N2O???
My apologies I got the number wrong, Nitrous dioxide is correct just I am no scientist.
(N2O) is correct – the stuff they put in these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipped-cream_charger
Perhaps there’s a correlation between suicide and reading drivel the few days before?
They should study that.
What a load of absolute bollocks. I’ll take that study, and raise you a big city called London. Where NO2 levels are through the roof and worst in the world thanks to the green lobby, and yet suicide levels are the lowest in a generation.
http://time.com/122283/china-pollution-london-beijing-nitrogen-dioxide-no2/
http://positivenews.org.uk/2013/wellbeing/11199/london-suicide-rate-30-year/
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-suicide-rates-are-lowest-in-uk-8461574.html
All this talk of suicide is keeping any “highs” lower, the main problem is keeping the lows higher.
I’ve seen attempts with an asprin overdose, and bloody wrist cutting with a razor blade, it makes you wonder what made your mother so…….sad.
New study shows middle aged people are at greater risk of becoming old people.