(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- On days with poor air quality, you might feel a little down. And it may not be your imagination.
David Molitor, an associate professor of finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, draws a connection between suicide and air pollution from faraway wildfires.
“Air pollution causes stress to cells throughout your entire body,” he tells WBBM Newsradio’s Dave Dahl. “Now, why that affects mental health: Is this because air pollution is causing direct physical damage to brain cells? Or is it because high air pollution days are just hard for people to deal with. You miss days of work, and that’s a big bummer.”
Molitor and other researchers looked at 12 years’ worth of suicides and the air conditions when they occur.
Also, suicides are up about 30 percent over the last 20 years.
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