Preliminary results from CitieS-Health, a citizen science project co-directed by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), suggest that there could be a relationship between air pollution levels and a worsening of the mental health of the population, specifically cognitive performance and stress.
The project counted with the active participation of 300 residents of Barcelona and has analyzed the relationship between their health and mobility habits with data on their mental health collected through different questionnaires of the CitieS-Health app.
On a polluted day, cognitive performance and reaction capacity could deteriorate by 5% while stress could increase 0.5 points out of 10.
These results, which are being compiled to publish a scientific article in the near future, have been contrasted with official data and are consistent with the existing information on air pollution, land use and noise in the city of Barcelona.
