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Wildfire-sourced fine particulate matter and mental disorders in children and adolescents

Nature Mental Health volume 4, pages 243–254 (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

Wildfire-specific fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is an increasing public health concern given its greater toxicity than non-wildfire PM2.5. However, little is known about its impacts on the mental health of children and adolescents ≤19 years (for example, substance use, anxiety and depression). Here we estimate associations of wildfire-specific PM2.5 with emergency department (ED) visits for child mental disorders across 845 communities in Australia, Brazil and Canada during 2004‒2019, comparing with that of non-wildfire PM2.5. Each 1 µg m−3 increase in daily wildfire-specific PM2.5 was associated with a 1.4% (1.4‒1.5%) increase in child mental health-related ED visits 6 days following exposure. Stronger associations were observed for schizophrenia, boys, children under 5 years, low-income or more urbanized communities, communities with higher levels of PM2.5 from non-wildfire sources, and Brazil. Annually, wildfire-specific PM2.5 was responsible for an estimated 22,459 (22,131‒22,782) ED visits for child mental disorders, posing greater risks to substance use, bipolar affective disorder, depression and anxiety than non-wildfire PM2.5. Urgent action is needed to mitigate the mental health impacts of wildfire air pollution, safeguarding the well-being of future generations in the face of increasing wildfires.

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Fig. 1: Geographical distribution of wildfire-specific PM2.5 across study communities.
Fig. 2: Cumulative OR for ED visits for mental disorders among children and adolescents associated with a 1 µg m−3 increase in wildfire-specific PM2.5 during the lag 0–6 days.
Fig. 3: Comparison of the health impacts of wildfire-specific and non-wildfire PM2.5 on ED visits for mental disorders among children and adolescents.

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Data availability

Publicly available data are found here: the global gridded Gross Domestic Product data (GDP, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dk1j0); the Gridded Population of the World (GPW, https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/projects/gpw); the gridded ratio of built-up area to non-built-up area (built-up ratio, 1 × 1 km) from the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC, https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/catalog/sedac-ciesin-sedac-pmp-grdi-2010-2020-1.00); surface temperature and ambient dewpoint temperature from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis, v5 (ERA5, https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datasets/era5); Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2) data, biomass burning emissions inventory of Global Fire Emissions Database version 4.1 (GFED V4.1) data, and anthropogenic emissions inventory of EDGAR version 4.2 data that support the GEOS-Chem model development and wildfire-specific PM2.5 simulation in this study are available from https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/reanalysis/MERRA-2/, https://daac.ornl.gov/VEGETATION/guides/fire_emissions_v4_R1.html and http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/, respectively. For emergency department visit data for child mental disorders, the authors are not permitted to share the data. Interested researchers should contact the corresponding author on a case-by-case basis. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

Analysis codes are available at https://github.com/Yiwen-Zhang-666/Multicountry_Wildfire_Child_Mental_ED.git.

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Acknowledgements

This study is supported by the Australian Research Council (DP210102076) and the Australian National Health & Medical Research Council (APP2000581). Y.Z. is supported by NHMRC e-Asia Joint Research Program Grant (GNT2000581). R.X. is supported by Monash Faculty of Medicine Nursing and Health Science (FMNHS) Bridging Postdoctoral Fellowships 2022 and VicHealth Postdoctoral Research Fellowships 2022. S.Z., T.Y. and W.Y. were supported by Monash Faculty of Medicine Nursing and Health Science (FMNHS) Early Career Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025. P.Y. was supported by Monash Faculty of Medicine Nursing and Health Science (FMNHS) Early Career Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023. M.S.Z.S.C. and P.H.N.S. are supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation. S.L. is supported by the Emerging Leader Fellowship (GNT2009866) of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council; Y.G. is supported by the Career Development Fellowship (GNT1163693) and the Leader Fellowship (GNT2008813) of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.

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Author notes

  1. These authors jointly supervised this work: Yuming Guo, Shanshan Li.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Climate, Air Quality Research Unit, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Yiwen Zhang, Shuang Zhou, Zhengyu Yang, Wenzhong Huang, Wenhua Yu, Gongbo Chen, Tingting Ye, Yanming Liu, Pei Yu, Yuming Guo & Shanshan Li

  2. Chongqing Emergency Medical Center, Chongqing University Central Hospital, School of Medicine, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Rongbin Xu

  3. School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Rongbin Xu

  4. Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Paulo H. N. Saldiva & Micheline S. Z. S. Coelho

  5. School of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Eric Lavigne

  6. Environmental Health Science and Research Bureau, Health Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Eric Lavigne

  7. Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Jiangning Song

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Contributions

S.L. and Y.G. designed the study and are co-senior authors. Y.Z. conducted the statistical analysis and took lead in drafting the manuscript and interpreting the results. R.X. estimated the wildfire-specific PM2.5 exposure data. S.Z., R.X., Z.Y., W.H, P.H.N.S, W.Y., G.C., M.S.Z.S.C., T.Y., Y.L., P.Y., E.L., J.S., Y.G. and S.L. revised and edited the paper. R.X., Z.Y., T.Y., Y.L. and P.Y. cleaned the data. Z.Y., M.S.Z.S.C., P.H.N.S. and E.L. provided the data and contributed to the submitted version of the paper. The corresponding author attests that all listed authors meet authorship criteria and that no others meeting the criteria have been omitted.

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Correspondence to Shanshan Li.

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Zhang, Y., Zhou, S., Xu, R. et al. Wildfire-sourced fine particulate matter and mental disorders in children and adolescents. Nat. Mental Health 4, 243–254 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00571-8

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