Are There Particles of Air Pollution In Our Brains?

Introduction
21st century brought us a world, in which everyone is living so fast, and everything is developing in a blink of an eye. Also day by day, scientists come to new conclusions and new results, after conducting some researches, all beneficial. The thing is that, we might not like some of this results, as they do not suit our lifestyle, or simply because we cannot really do anything to change that, so it is better to not know something, then to be presented to cruel truth. Recent studies, showed that particles from pol-luted air, can actually affect our brain tissues, and lead to some serious medical conditions. For now, this is just an assumption, but we would like to use this article to deeply discuss this matter, as if this is true, it simply cannot slip away.

How does polluted air affect our brain?
First thing, that we want to say, is that Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most common in USA, with over 500,000 people being affected by it. That is a huge number. So scientists are working every day, to find out possible cures and factors that can trigger this disease. For  few years already, there have been results that connect polluted air, with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, where effect on central nervous system were not widely recognized. Having that in mind, a group of scientists from USA and Mexico, have teamed up to conduct research, on possible effects that contaminated air has on human brains. The research was conducted, by examining brain tissues of 37 people from, who’s age ranged from 3 to 92. And the results are not encouraging. Researchers found nanoparticles, which do not look like they were naturally formed by brain, so there is a possibility that they are coming from some outside source, like pollution is. Those particles, that are in iron oxide form, apparently look similar, to those which are found in polluted air.

Although this is worrying, officials from National Academy of Sciences, say that this is just a discovery, and that it needs to be tested further, before they extract any serious conclusion. The actual process, of how those magnetite particles could end up in our brain are pretty simple. Because of their small size, they can get in the olfactory bulb, which is not protected by blood-brain barrier, and travel directly to brain without any disruptions. The only thing you need to do is to breathe in the air, and you do not really have a choice on that. By comparing people with Alzheimer’s disease and healthy people, it was noticed, that people with this medical condition, do have much more particles similar to this, which can lead us to a conclusion, that it can increase risk of Alzheimer disease, along with other things. So although this is yet to be more tested, people now ask themselves how can they prevent or at least, lower the risk of breathing that contaminated air. For this particular case, it is said that wearing a mask, over your face, will not actually help, because the particles are so small, that they can get through that mask us well. There are few things that you could do though:

• Avoid highly polluted areas
• Avoid curbs
• Try to plan route through parks or backstreets if that is possible

There are also things that you should do regularly so you can lower the risk of dementia or Alzheimer’s in general:

• Exercise few times a week
• Healthy diet, based on micro and macronutrients
• Do not smoke and avoid smokers

Also it is important to raise awareness about this stuff, because if there is the slightest chance that pol-lution might affect our health, more than we already know, there has to be a serious talk about changing policy, and lowering the concentrations of these nanoparticles in atmosphere.

Read More: Major Brain Myths Debunked

Conclusion
As we already said, technology is developing faster than anyone could imagine. So it is impor-tant to use exactly that, as an advantage, to research more about diseases, causes and possible cures, instead of wasting all that knowledge, on creating things that will separate people from interaction and normal way of living. There are numerous threats to our health, with possible conditions rising every year, mostly connected to mental illnesses or other brain diseases. This is a sign that there needs to be an urgent reaction, because it simply cannot be let, that this trend keeps on. The research that we just discussed about can be one side be very disturbing, but on the other side, a great start, for new examinations, that might eventually lead to possi-ble solutions of brain diseases, by discovering what are all the causes. With Alzheimer disease being widely spread in world and USA (over 500 thousand people affected), and air pollution being one of most recognized reasons for early death, it is crucial to find out new information, and do further tests on possible connections, between these two. And once we have some cer-tain results, there can be talk about some serious changes in policies and the world system in general.

References:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/airpollutionmagneticparticles_us_57cf2225e4b0a48094a6294e
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25256239