January 6, 2017.
According to a team of researchers from the Ontario Public Health agency, living near major highways increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Living near the road can drive you crazy
It is true that living in an apartment or a house near a highway can be extremely inconvenient. First of all, there is noise pollution, but also the omnipresence of pollution. However, according to a study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, living near a major highway could increase the risk of dementia.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers analyzed the medical data of more than 6 million people living in the Canadian province of Ontario between 2001 and 2012. In total, more than 240,000 cases of dementia, approximately 31,000 cases of Parkinson’s disease and more than 9,000 cases of multiple sclerosis, were recorded during this period.
Pollution would be responsible
By finding out where these sick people lived, they could see that 7 to 11% of the cases of neurological disorders observed in people living within 50 meters of a busy road axis could be attributed to this exposure to traffic. In question: exposure to two pollutants, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine particles, emitted by motor vehicles.
Interestingly, this proximity to busy roads increases the risk of developing dementia, but not the risk of having Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis.
” Our research shows that the closer you live to roads with very busy daily traffic, the more likely you are to develop dementia Explained Dr. Hong Chen, of the Ontario Public Health agency which led this work. ” This finding has important implications for public health today, given our increased exposure to traffic and our increased tendency to live in cities.. “
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