Delayed associations between air pollution and population health across the life course
Fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) in the United States has fallen by roughly half since 2000, yet linked health outcomes such as diabetes and childhood ADHD have not improved in parallel. One reconciling possibility is that pollution exposure in early life produces health effects that emerge only years or decades later, after pollution itself has declined. Using two decades of U.S. county-level data, we relate annual PM2.5 estimates to birth outcomes, diabetes prevalence, and small-area estimates of childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across short and long time scales. Within counties, changes in low birth weight rates are associated with changes in PM2.5 during the same year and the year prior to birth. At longer time scales, cross-county comparisons show that PM2.5 exposure is associated with higher prevalence of adult diabetes and ADHD after approximately a decade. Together, these patterns suggest that population-level health risks from air pollution may persist over decades, even as pollution itself declines.