Alongside mounting research connecting air pollution with catastrophically increasing rates of bodily diseases besides respiratory and cardiovascular ills (e.g., diabetes and obesity), evidence has also grown that it impacts cognition.
According to a study of 130,978 adults aged 50–79 (BMJ Open, September 18, 2018), older patients across London (UK) living in areas with higher air pollution were more likely to be diagnosed with dementia in subsequent years,.
A Canadian study (Lancet, 2017) involving 6.6 million adults aged 20 to 85, found that living close to major roadways heavily traveled was associated with a higher incidence of dementia.
Four years following more than 25,000 individuals in China identified a correlation between worse air quality and cognitive decline (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Aug 27, 2018).
(Lethality concerns are spreading: Authorities in Pristina, Kosovo, planning an emergency parliamentary session on long-term meaures, banned cars from the city center this February, in response to health protests, because of pollution so bad it sometimes exceeds levels in Chinese cities. Sarajevo, Tuzla and Zenica in Bosnia and Macedonia's capital, Skopje, are similarly plagued with dirty air. In December 2017, Reuters reported multiple days of schools shut down in Iran’s capital and others of its major cities because of dangerous air quality.)
AMONG EARLIER STUDIES:
In 2015, Johns Hopkins research implicated fine particulates in mental health issues, notably anxiety, in the developing as well as “advanced” world; and a Boston study found that
exposure to high levels of fine particulate matter smaller than 2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5) was associated with smaller total cerebral brain volume, a marker of age-related brain atrophy, and with higher odds of covert brain infarcts. PM2.5 is a common type of air pollution generated from burning wood or coal, car exhaust, and other sources.
Two 2012 studies (Boston and Chicago) found air pollution impacting cognition, and research in California and North Carolina later associated air pollution with autism.
MITIGATING IMPACT AT PERSONAL LEVEL:
People living 24/7 & 365 in areas with high levels of outdoor air pollution usually don’t have the income for much control over that kind of exposure, aside from trying to avoid being outdoors or using transportation during rush hours. The London study authors advise taking measures to control indoor air pollution:
"Indoors, you can minimize pollution by not burning candles [or] open fires, [and] have good ventilation/extraction when cooking and cleaning," .... "Face masks do not usually work unless they are an extremely good fit to the face and have good filters in place — the most expensive."
By the end of 2017, a Yemeni university student received a $15,000 “Young Champions of the Earth” award from UN Environment, and $10,000 from Yemeni oil company PetroMasila, to help complete, manufacture, and distribute rurally his clean, efficient invention — a biogas-from-organic-waste device for cooking, lighting, heating, and converting organic waste into fertilizer and cleaner fuel.
And the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves had reported distributing about 81 million clean and energy-efficient cookstove/heater/water-heater devices worldwide, some in Kenya, whose own community based Muguga Ecosystem Research Community Forest Association was set to distribute safer, more efficient devices to 5,000-plus households by the end of 2019.
TRANSLATING THE VALUE TO OUTDOOR AIR QUALITY OF 'BROADLY APPLIED INTERVENTIONS':
The research by Jennifer Weuve, MPH, ScD and colleagues (Chicago) found that
10 μg/m3 higher exposure to PM was cognitively equal to aging by up to 2 years,
and the higher the more. While the magnitude of the association may not seem significant at first glance, projections show that a broadly applied intervention within today’s science that saves those 2 years could reduce US cases of Alzheimer’s alone by roughly 2 million across a 40-year interval. That speaks further to millions of cases of respiratory and cardiovascular ills, diabetes, obesity, mental health disorders, other cognitive impairments, autism, and added pollution-linked disorders identified going forward.
Otherwise, the personal impact as struggle, suffering, and impoverishment, the local impact in terms of medical resources and caregiving adequate to meet growing need or not, the impact upon state, regional and national economy in terms of able and productive workforce relative to proportions of the disabled, is going to translate into increasingly massive dollar figures of loss at every level, and increasing misery, hitting soonest and hardest among disadvantaged communities ... a descriptor that’s going to apply more and widely, and —ironically— more and more diversely and inclusively.
Industries for cleaning air offer the promise of promoting economies at every scale, and protecting health and all the resources otherwise condemned.
"This notion of a 'broadly applied intervention' may sound like wishful thinking," Dr. Weuve admitted. Yet, unlike other factors that may be involved in dementia [for one, such as diet/nutrition —itself impaired by air pollution— and physical activity —increasingly problematic to arrange for safely in polluted areas— "[this] is something that we can intervene on as a society at large through policy, regulation and technology, offering a population-wide means of preventing or delaying dementia if, indeed, its development is related to PM exposure."
Is it? And are the rising rates of other increasingly lethal chronic physical and mental health issues related to air pollution? The only thing easier to see through filthy air will be the growing body of evidence of the growing scope of impact of air pollution.
Many individual as well as broadly applied measures for turning it all around are within reach already, and more in development. They can only work if they’re used. It’s up to us.
UPDATE — Related: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/902232
Environmental Risks: How Do We Protect Kids? Interviewer: Laurie Scudder, PNP, DNP; Interviewee: Jennifer A. Lowry, MD
Concerns about chemicals in food, water, and air, and their impact on children's health, have been a near constant drumbeat throughout 2018. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and its Council on Environmental Health have been busy examining issues ranging from food additives to lead in water and pollution from coal-burning power plants…..
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