I think this is essentially a complaint that the study does not share your political topspin. I pretty much agree with the view that depression is a holistic problem, and the causes run deep. Treating the symptom is not likely to be a cure for the systemic disease. But you can't dismiss scientific findings because they don't exactly share your ideological diagnosis.
For the record, I'm not dismissing them at all, I'm putting forth a hypothesis regarding them. My "political topspin" here is informed by the study, my main point of contention regards the interpretation of the direction these results are pointing in and where future research and resources should lie. I think investing in air filters is a silly approach to this problem if you're looking at root causes. Restructuring our economy to be friendlier to workers and their environment is a comparatively monumental task, but it's actually tackling both problems at their more fundamental causes.
> I think investing in air filters is a silly approach to this problem
The problem of air pollution and the problem of the fucked up society we live in are not identical in scope. You can't dismiss the solution to the smaller problem for not solving the larger one.
If living in a smog filled city is affecting my health, I will invest in air filters and masks before I invest in societal change that will change the way the world does business. I can do one in an afternoon, and the other is an unbounded task.
We should be able to tackle problems at large and in the small simultaneously, but your position strikes me as all or nothing in the sense that nothing but your exact prescription will do.
Given A: fucked up society, B: air pollution, C: depression, the world is probably a cyclical graph between all three. You are denying that B and C could be connected, just because you think A is such a huge problem. This is putting the blinders on against evidence for political reasons.
