Exposure to pollution during childhood can impair cognitive abilities and decrease thinking skills.
- Exposure to pollution in the first years of life is thought to impair thinking skills for more than 60 years.
- This discovery is the first to point to lasting cognitive effects of pollution.
The atmospheric environment influences our cognitive abilities and not necessarily positively. Exposure to pollution in the first years of life would reduce thinking skills for more than 60 years, according to a study published on February 2 in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. These results add to others on the harmful effects of pollution on health according to which pollution increases the risk of cardiometabolic disease or even the risk of death.
Effects on the brain years later
Pollution is a hindrance to intelligence. Scottish researchers from the University of Edinburgh have studied the link between air pollution and cognitive abilities. For this they tested the intelligence of more than 500 people aged around 70 using a test carried out at the age of 11 which they repeated at 76 and 79 years old. At the same time, the researchers tracked air pollution levels during the volunteers’ childhood. They also took into account lifestyle factors such as tobacco use or socioeconomic status. Using statistical models, they were then able to analyze the relationship between a person’s exposure to air pollution and their thinking skills later in life.
The results showed a correlation between air pollution and cognitive changes. Researchers report that it is possible to estimate air pollution and its relationship to cognitive ability across the lifespan. If this association is weak, the cognitive changes were enough to lead researchers to see a causal link. “For the first time, we have shown that exposure to air pollution very early in life could have effects on the brain decades later.concluded Dr Tom Russ, director of the Alzheimer’s Dementia Research Center Scotland at the University of Edinburgh and author of the study. This is the first step towards understanding the harmful effects of air pollution on the brain and could help reduce the risk of dementia for future generations..”, sums up Dr Tom Russ, director of the Alzheimer’s Dementia Research Center in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh.
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