Various studies have shown that high levels of air pollution are correlated with increased risks of mental and neurological disorders. The link has generated concern among health organizations because air pollution affects 99% of the global population, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Research carried out by the National Institute of Pediatrics between 2008 and 2010 analyzed changes in the brains of children in Mexico City, a highly polluted area. The work managed to identify the neurotoxicity of air pollution. He discovered that infants who lived in the metropolis had more lesions in the white matter tracts that connect brain regions, compared to their peers who lived outside the capital. They also showed poorer performance on cognitive tasks.
A published article in the magazine Nature underlines that these findings generated alerts about the neurological effects of pollutants throughout the world. The clinical publication The Lancet recognized pollution as a risk factor for dementia in 2020. A year later, the WHO emphasized the need to expand studies on the phenomenon in young and elderly people.
The scientific community still does not have clarity about what the underlying mechanisms of the problem are and how they work, which makes it difficult to design effective mitigation policies. Most analyzes lack controls that provide greater certainty to their results.
What’s in the air
The most recent advances indicate that specific types of pollutants play a fundamental role in correlated brain damage. The standards for measuring air quality consider primary gaseous components, and particles with diameters smaller than 10 and 2.5 micrometers. However, these small bodies transport various chemicals whose toxicity varies depending on their origin. Ian Mudway, an environmental toxicologist at Imperial College London, recalls that air pollution “is a heterogeneous mixture of hundreds of thousands of different chemical compounds.”
An extensive study carried out in the United Kingdom Biobank with more than 389 thousand participants revealed in 2023 that prolonged exposure to suspended particles and nitrogen oxides significantly increases the risk of suffering from depression and anxiety. Guoxing Li, an environmental toxicologist at Peking University and lead author of the trial, emphasizes that even very low exposure levels increased the incidence of these conditions.
Deborah Cory-Slechta, professor of Environmental Medicine, Neuroscience and Public Health Sciences at the University of Rochester, explains that particles less than 100 nanometers in diameter are the most dangerous to health. Despite this, he warns that these ultrafine molecules are not analyzed on a regular basis.
Mudway maintains that although monitoring systems will be expanded, studies cannot precisely identify which specific chemical causes neurological disorders. The presence of other risk factors, such as cardiovascular diseases, makes the interpretation of these results even more difficult. According to Mudway, “the only way to get clear answers is through controlled experiments.”
In 2012, Cory-Slechta designed a laboratory test to compare the effects of polluted and clean air on the brains of two groups of mice. He found that rodents exposed to ultrafine particles showed enlarged white matter tracts and brain ventricles, elevated levels of impulsivity, and short-term memory deficits.
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