Exposure to vehicle pollution bad for brains old and young

May, 2011

Two recent studies have come out implicating traffic pollutants as factors in age-related cognitive decline and dementia and as prenatal risk factors for attention problems.

A study in which mice were exposed to polluted air for three 5-hour sessions a week for 10 weeks, has revealed that such exposure damaged neurons in the hippocampus and caused inflammation in the brain. The polluted air was laden with particles collected from an urban freeway.

Another recent study found that, of 215 children, those whose cord blood showed high levels of combustion-related pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), had more attention (and anxiety) problems at ages 5 and 7. The children were born to nonsmoking African-American and Dominican women residing in New York City.

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