Air Pollution Could Be Significant Cause of Dementia (theguardian.com) 64
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Air pollution from traffic is linked to some of the more severe forms of dementia, and could be a significant cause of the condition among those who are not already genetically predisposed to it, research suggests. Research carried out in Atlanta, Georgia, found that people with higher exposure to traffic-related fine particulate matter air pollution were more likely to have high amounts of the amyloid plaques in their brains that are associated with Alzheimer's. The findings, which will alarm anyone living in a town or city, but particularly those living near busy roads, add to the harms already known to be caused by road traffic pollution, ranging from climate change to respiratory diseases.
A team of researchers from Atlanta's Emory University set out to specifically investigate the effects on people's brains of exposure the type of fine particulate matter known as PM2.5. This consists of particles of less than 2.5 microns in diameter -- about a hundredth the thickness of a human hair -- suspended in the air, and is known to penetrate deep into living tissue, including crossing the blood-brain barrier. Traffic-related PM2.5 concentrations are a major source of ambient pollution in the metro-Atlanta area, and also in urban centers across the planet. [...] "We found that donors who lived in areas with high concentrations of traffic-related air pollution exposure, in particular PM2.5 exposure, had higher levels of Alzheimer's disease neuropathology in their brain," said Anke Huels, an assistant professor at Emory University in Atlanta, who was the lead author on the study. "In particular, we looked at a score that is used to evaluate evaluate amyloid plaques in the brain, in autopsy samples, and we showed that donors who live in areas with higher levels of air pollution, and also higher levels of amyloid plaques in their brain."
There was a positive relationship between exposure to high levels of PM2.5 and levels of amyloid plaques in the brains of the subjects the team examined. They found that people with a 1 ug/m3 higher PM2.5 exposure in the year before death were nearly twice as likely to have higher levels of amyloid plaques in their brains, while those with higher exposure in the three years before death were 87% more likely to have higher levels of plaques. Huels and her team also investigated whether having the main gene variant associated with Alzheimer's disease, ApoE4, had any effect on the relationship between air pollution and signs of Alzheimer's in the brain. "We found that the association between In air pollution and severity of Alzheimer's disease was stronger among those who did not carry an ApoE4 allele, those who did not have that strong genetic risk for Alzheimer disease," Huels said. "Which kind of suggests that environmental exposures like air pollution may explain some of the Alzheimer's risk in people whose risk cannot be explained by genetic risk factor." The findings have been published in the online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
A team of researchers from Atlanta's Emory University set out to specifically investigate the effects on people's brains of exposure the type of fine particulate matter known as PM2.5. This consists of particles of less than 2.5 microns in diameter -- about a hundredth the thickness of a human hair -- suspended in the air, and is known to penetrate deep into living tissue, including crossing the blood-brain barrier. Traffic-related PM2.5 concentrations are a major source of ambient pollution in the metro-Atlanta area, and also in urban centers across the planet. [...] "We found that donors who lived in areas with high concentrations of traffic-related air pollution exposure, in particular PM2.5 exposure, had higher levels of Alzheimer's disease neuropathology in their brain," said Anke Huels, an assistant professor at Emory University in Atlanta, who was the lead author on the study. "In particular, we looked at a score that is used to evaluate evaluate amyloid plaques in the brain, in autopsy samples, and we showed that donors who live in areas with higher levels of air pollution, and also higher levels of amyloid plaques in their brain."
There was a positive relationship between exposure to high levels of PM2.5 and levels of amyloid plaques in the brains of the subjects the team examined. They found that people with a 1 ug/m3 higher PM2.5 exposure in the year before death were nearly twice as likely to have higher levels of amyloid plaques in their brains, while those with higher exposure in the three years before death were 87% more likely to have higher levels of plaques. Huels and her team also investigated whether having the main gene variant associated with Alzheimer's disease, ApoE4, had any effect on the relationship between air pollution and signs of Alzheimer's in the brain. "We found that the association between In air pollution and severity of Alzheimer's disease was stronger among those who did not carry an ApoE4 allele, those who did not have that strong genetic risk for Alzheimer disease," Huels said. "Which kind of suggests that environmental exposures like air pollution may explain some of the Alzheimer's risk in people whose risk cannot be explained by genetic risk factor." The findings have been published in the online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
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Or it might be?
It could be a case of correlation != causation.
There is plenty of data that poor people are more likely to suffer from dementia.
There is also plenty of evidence that poor people live in areas with more pollution.
So the root cause could be poverty, and the other issues are correlated but not causative.
Poverty linked to higher rates of dementia [nih.gov]
Air pollution exposure and poverty [nature.com]
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It could be a case of correlation != causation.
There is plenty of data that poor people are more likely to suffer from dementia.
There is also plenty of evidence that poor people live in areas with more pollution.
So the root cause could be poverty, and the other issues are correlated but not causative.
Poverty linked to higher rates of dementia
Air pollution exposure and poverty
Sitting on your ass all day is linked to dementia
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
Poor diet is linked to dementia
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
Work Remote (Score:5, Insightful)
Another reason why working-from-home should be widely embraced. It both reduces pollution AND keeps the remote workers far less exposed to the pollution that remains.
Making us drive to the office is literally driving us crazy.
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Could you post a link to that study? Because I suspect that people who work from home tend to live in places where the PM2.5 emissions per capita is the highest.
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Could you post a link to that study?
It's kinda obvious, but if you really need a link, here's one I found with a five-second Google search:
Green benefits of remote work [cornell.edu]
From the link: "Remote workers can have a 54% lower carbon footprint compared with onsite workers, according to a new study by Cornell and Microsoft"
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Thanks. That study is specific to Microsoft [pnas.org], so it's anecdotal. And:
Re:Work Remote (Score:4, Insightful)
Could you post a link to that study?
Ask yourself that question. Sitting comfortably in your home vs. behind a steering wheel in high traffic sucking tailpipe fumes through every vent for hours in a seated position wasting upwards of an extra workweek sitting in a car commuting instead of working, while enduring the additional financial and mental stress of spending hundreds more per month on gas and increased insurance rates, and risking your very life doing the most statistically dangerous thing humans do regularly; drive a car. All for a job you could do in your home. On a planet choking out on emissions.
Now multiply that pointless insanity by millions and millions of cars. Or more to your point ask yourself what happens when you remove that many polluting cars.
Because I suspect that people who work from home tend to live in places where the PM2.5 emissions per capita is the highest.
Ever consider for a moment you are a human and not a math statistic? Fucking hell. This is beyond common sense. If you find evidence to the contrary, then all you’ve confirmed is the actual polluters are gaming statistics in their favor. Color me surprised.
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Pollution in the home (Score:3)
Ask yourself that question. Sitting comfortably in your home vs. behind a steering wheel in high traffic sucking tailpipe fumes through every vent for hours in a seated position wasting upwards of an extra workweek sitting in a car commuting instead of working, while enduring the additional financial and mental stress of spending hundreds more per month on gas and increased insurance rates, and risking your very life doing the most statistically dangerous thing humans do regularly; drive a car.
The mechanism is suspected to be long-term and low level inflammation. That's not generally accepted yet, but at the same time there's no conclusive mechanism for dementia, so the inflammation explanation seems reasonable. Currently.
The problem with your scenario is that it requires people to spend 8 hours inside the home, as opposed to 2 hours commute and 8 hours in an office.
The home might have carpets on which water was spilled a long time ago, and growing mold or bacteria. Bacteria of a certain type tha
Speaking of mold.. (Score:2)
Thousands of commercial buildings laid dormant and empty during a multi-year long global pandemic, barely maintained.
As we debate on which space secretly holds more slow death in the walls for humans working there, I really wonder how many Mold Landlords are going to bother with “white glove” inspections, or if they’re going to ask the cleaning crew to drop some extra air fresheners and call it good.
I’m confident the class-action schedule circa 2030 will tell us.
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Because I suspect that people who work from home tend to live in places where the PM2.5 emissions per capita is the highest.
Most ground level PM2.5 is caused by combustion. So aside from when a leaf blower is being operated nearby, most residential areas are relatively low in it. I have an air quality meter which measures it, and a cheap (costco-sourced) air filter in my house, and the PM2.5s are very low. They are also quite low at work, surprisingly, but not so low during the drive to work. My car has a carbon cabin air filter and it doesn't seem to do much to help. I can still smell the unburned HCs, too.
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All of this "work from home" stuff started with the covid pandemic 4 years ago. At the height of the stay-at-home experience in spring of 2020, there were reports "all over the place" of reduced air pollution levels as most people were off the road.
Some things cannot be investigated as prospective experiments, not pre facto "studies", but the experience in retrospect is clear, and the real time reporting was strong. And, you don't need a study to know that drive less > create less emissions > put le
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That's just like the way adding another traffic lane reduces traffic congestion, right? Well yes, until it doesn't. [twitter.com]
So my concern is about how this all plays out in the long run, after people adjust their lifestyles and living conditions in a WFH-friendly world. Will they move from cities to suburbs where emissions per capita are higher [acs.org]?
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yep - driving to a place where your employer - who is paying your wage - wants you to work from.
You mean driving BACK to the place that both you and your bosses abandoned 3 years ago, and successfully maintained the business, but now are under corrupt political pressure to “justify” overhyped overpriced commercial real estate, because otherwise too many retirement and pension funds that are riddled with overhyped overpriced bullshit will crash. Oh and pointless cube farmers. We need to make them great again. For some pointless corrupt reason.
Not to mention the insane hypocrisy that dema
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or you could live near your workplace or use clean public transport like the rest of the world is trying to do. btw, you surely do leave your house every day for other reasons. if you live in the u.s. chances are you drive a few miles in a personal car for anything from buying toilet paper to having a beer, which makes sparing the one roundtrip for commuting even less significant.
nice try, though ;-)
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So you would move every time you change jobs? How does this work if your life partner works too, somewhere else? Even within a city: when I do go to the office, it's a 40 minute public transport trip, or 30 minutes in car (public transport is excellent here, I never take the car). For some people I know, that would indeed warrant a move. They don't have families though.
Moving is a slightly traumatic experience: all local connections severed, all knowledge of whereabouts invalidated, and immediate surroundi
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indeed all good points. mine was precisely to stress that ... it's complicated.
then again hoping for tech and industry to improve our environmental footprint without changing our habits isn't going to work.
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So you would move every time you change jobs? How does this work if your life partner works too, somewhere else? Even within a city: when I do go to the office, it's a 40 minute public transport trip, or 30 minutes in car (public transport is excellent here, I never take the car).
Sounds like another USA viewpoint, like most here. I have had different jobs in different parts of London and they all remained within reach of public transport from where I lived. A 40 minute public transport trip around the London area during the working day would be a 90 minute trip by car.
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> Sounds like another USA viewpoint
Suburbia is spreading to Europe too... And some are built without public transport in mind.
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> Sounds like another USA viewpoint
Suburbia is spreading to Europe too... And some are built without public transport in mind.
Britain has suffered from suburbia ever since about 1850 (I think Britain invented it), and the public transport system around the major cities serves it quite well. Ever seen the map of railways around London? Or the bus routes? Even 30 miles out from the centre there is a railway station either within walking distance or a short car drive or cycle ride. I worked in central London for 20 years (while living 30 miles outside) and only drove to work twice in that time - that was to fetch home an old office
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if you live in the u.s. chances are you drive a few miles in a personal car for anything from buying toilet paper to having a beer, which makes sparing the one roundtrip for commuting even less significant.
nice try, though ;-)
Spare a trip you say?
A person working full time who has a one hour commute to work, will waste an entire fucking 40-hour workweek every month, sitting behind a steering wheel instead of being productive. Thats 12 workweeks per year. Three fucking MONTHS. Wasted commuting. All while you’re filling a gas tank and sucking fumes killing you slightly faster.
Wise the hell up. That “spare” trip isn’t dismissed easily, as your doctor will likely confirm.
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so you go fetch your doritos on your bike. right.
Re: Work Remote (Score:1)
Most people would find a one hour commute rather long. Suburbs to a city is typically 15-20 minutes. 1 hour one way you would live in a really rural area from most cities.
Off course if you choose to live in a big city like LA, SF, NYC then you make that choice but there are plenty of cities where life is safe and comfortable.
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> or you could live near your workplace or use clean public transport like the rest of the world is trying to do.
Yes, I too like to tack on 2 extra hours to my workday in a crowded train/bus, packed like a sardine. We have so much in common. Want to smash our bodies together in ways I don't even do with my significant other on a bus ride so we can discuss this further ?
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Check your indoor air quality, then get back to me. Indoor air is typically much worse than outdoors in most places and times.
Not going to happen (Score:2)
Low hanging fruit (Score:1)
The jokes practically write themselves. I have no idea how the Babylon Bee is still online.
The US CDC's advice... (Score:3)
CDC & PM2.5: https://www.cdc.gov/air/partic... [cdc.gov]
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wow. i really didn't expect to live to see this. how long before that advice becomes "and remember: always check your hazmat suit and tanks before leaving the bunker"?
Air pollution definitely causes dementia (Score:1)
Just suggest maybe we're emitting too much CO2 and you'll see the pollution dementia inmates come out of the woodwork.
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Small planes still use leaded fuel, and lead ingestion does lead to adult neurodegenerative disease, i.e. https://qz.com/2174870/researc... [qz.com] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
We banned leaded gasoline on roads decades ago. So to validate your point, we should find a statistically significant decrease in the number of diseases you cited after that. Did we?
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I remember reading a LOT of stories a couple decades ago about crime rates dropping like a rock ~20 years after the banning of leaded gasoline.
We were able to correlate crime increases 20 years after leaded gasoline was adopted, scaling linearly with the amount used, along with falls in crime as it was phased out of use, with it even tracking by areas that were early or late adopters and banners. Areas that adopted it the earliest experienced crime increases first, areas that banned it first saw crime drop
Age of Anxiety... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll take my chances on this one, given I have zero choice.
Still trying to deal with:
* The cost of living
* A broken healthcare system (and the fact I'm getting quite old now)
* Climate breakdown
* Broken political systems globally, with a lurch to the loony right
* The start of the drumbeats of a world war - we've been so close for so long, something is going to give soon
Mostly, I'm coping - coping by generally trying to ignore it all.
Air pollution and dementia?
Not even going to add it to my anxiety list...
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Another vaccine and some more carbon taxes from the loony left ought to fix it though, right?
You OK bro? You seem like you might have escaped your cult's compound and can't find your way home.
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* The cost of living
* A broken healthcare system (and the fact I'm getting quite old now)
* Climate breakdown
* Broken political systems globally, with a lurch to the loony right
* The start of the drumbeats of a world war - we've been so close for so long, something is going to give soon
Mostly, I'm coping - coping by generally trying to ignore it all.
Air pollution and dementia?
Not even going to add it to my anxiety list...
Wise move given anxiety has also been linked to dementia.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/conten... [bmj.com]
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The start of the drumbeats of a world war - we've been so close for so long, something is going to give soon
Yeah, the families have forgotten what the horrors of war were like. That was great grandpa's thing. We have much better weapons now and the lessons of the past have begun to dim, so war with the other families is inevitable. The rest of us are just along for the ride.
There are just a few families running the entire planet. And they have forgotten the lessons of the past and have no ideas about the subtleties and nuances of modern day weapons. It will get UGLY.
Air pollution (Score:3)
Is already known to impact brain development and is linked to a range of autoimmune disorders. Yes, air pollution is an inevitable consequence of technology, but if it is allowed to spiral out of control, it's going to impose a limit on technology.
This is partly because your next generation of budding scientists and engineers will have a lower mental capacity than their predecessors, and because of the dementia link, a shorter productive period. But you'll also have fewer scientists and engineers, as deaths in infancy and childhood are rising due to air quality related health conditions.
In other words, you want the cleanest air that the technology of the time will support, in order to maximise both the number of people who can contribute to science and technology, but to also maximise their ability to do so, all without impairing the economy that is needed to pay for their education and career.
We're going to have air pollution, we need a functioning economy, therefore we need the best possible balance that we can achieve.
Re:Air pollution (Score:5, Interesting)
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Is already known to impact brain development and is linked to a range of autoimmune disorders. Yes, air pollution is an inevitable consequence of technology, but if it is allowed to spiral out of control, it's going to impose a limit on technology.
Rather than spiraling it has dropped precipitously.
https://www.epa.gov/air-trends... [epa.gov]
If the general narratives are to be believed the dramatic reductions in air pollution over the last few decades should be having a significant positive impact. Instead we are treated to a parade of excuses for this not being controlling and constant scare mongering about dangers of current levels where the costs of further addressing them offers substantial diminishing returns.
This is partly because your next generation of budding scientists and engineers will have a lower mental capacity than their predecessors, and because of the dementia link, a shorter productive period. But you'll also have fewer scientists and engineers, as deaths in infancy and childhood are rising due to air quality related health conditions.
In other words, you want the cleanest air that the technology of the time will support, in order to maximise both the number of people who can contribute to science and technology, but to also maximise their ability to do so, all without impairing the economy that is needed to pay for their education and career
Just because x is bad and therefore getting rid
Smoking (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously people (Score:2)
If you are writing content about science papers, POST A LINK TO THE DOI.
https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.00... [doi.org]
DOIs were created to unambiguously link directly to the peer-reviewed article in question. Don’t make people have to hunt for it.
maybe, maybe not (Score:2)
There are many other things correlated with living in a place with high emissions, among them not being super smart indicative of brain plasticity, but also poor diet, doing other stupid things like drugs and alcohol, etc. It would be very hard to eliminate these other factors to tease out only the effect of the air pollution, much less which air pollution.
Debunked theory? (Score:2)
Research carried out in Atlanta, Georgia, found that people with higher exposure to traffic-related fine particulate matter air pollution were more likely to have high amounts of the amyloid plaques in their brains that are associated with Alzheimer's.
Wasn't the supposed link between amyloid plaque and Alzheimer's debunked recently?
Disgusting (Score:2)
“We found that donors who lived in areas with high concentrations of traffic-related air pollution exposure, in particular PM2.5 exposure, had higher levels of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology in their brain,” said Anke Huels, an assistant professor at Emory University in Atlanta, who was the lead author on the study.
The above is another case of CORRELATION != CAUSATION. Why? Because there are MANY MANY MANY other factors there and yet, this bimbo points to just 1. My prof would have FLUNKED ME INSTANTLY for doing such BS work.
What is worse is the fact that actual reviewed science mag with accreditation would allow such trash to be published.
This kind of trash belongs in the f765ing national enquirer, fox news, C
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You could not be more wrong.
It's very common for a research project to look for a correlation of exactly one element to consider whether there is enough of an association to warrant pursuing further study.
Here's the actual study's overview. Note the references.
https://www.neurology.org/doi/... [neurology.org]
Abstract
"Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure has been found to be associated with Alzheimer disease (AD) and is hypothesized to cause inflammation and oxidative stress in the brain, contributing to neuropathology.
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"Oxygen exposure has been found to be associated with Alzheimer disease (AD) and is hypothesized to cause inflammation and oxidative stress in the brain, contributing to neuropathology. The APOE gene, a major genetic risk factor of AD, has been hypothesized to modify the association between PM2.5 and AD. However, little prior research exists to support these hypotheses. This study investigates the association between Oxygen and AD hallmark pathology, including effect modification by APOE genotype,
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Nope.
To show that there is an association between Oxygen and AD hallmark pathology in the manner of the PM2.5-APOE gene study, you have to show that there is some kind of a dose dependent relationship between the amount of oxygen and the degree of AD. And have a control group.
What you're suggesting in no way resembles the methodology used in these studies.
Admittedly, there has been shown a link between hypoxia and increased AD in people with problems such as sleep apnea and COPD like problems, but that's
EV (Score:2)
Just another reason for EVs