A new study published in August in the journal JAMA Network Open underscores the range of health risks scientists have long warned are being driven by air pollution.
Nearly 188,000 dementia cases in the US each year may have been caused by air pollution, with bad air quality from wildfires and agriculture showing the strongest links to a person’s risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other kinds of dementia later in life.
While studies have already linked air pollution to the risk of developing a number of health problems, including dementia, the new estimates offer a better look at how specific reasons behind bad air quality seem to be more strongly linked to dementia than others.
The findings were based on data collected from a decades-long survey, following up with scores of older Americans every couple of years about their health.
Researchers focused on particle pollution, also called PM2.5 or particulate matter. These extremely small particles come from a variety of sources, including wildfire smoke and vehicle exhaust, and are linked to coughing, shortness of breath and worsening asthma.
But Dementia Takes A Long Time To Develop
Dementia is “more likely to build up over a lifetime,” said Sara Adar, associate chair of epidemiology at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, adding the condition isn’t something that might be, “‘oh you’ve got a bad exposure last week'”.
Beyond the direct emissions from wildfires and agriculture, the analysis also considered other kinds of air pollution that can be traced back to these polluting sources.
While the world already has solutions to tackle the overwhelming problem, we all need to put in efforts to work together and across levels of jurisdiction to implement the solutions at scale.
While air pollution significantly harms the areas near its source, it remains an intrinsically transboundary problem as wind facilitates the transfer of pollutants over thousands of kilometres in the atmosphere.
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Therefore, in order to manage the problem in a meaningful way, transboundary solutions should be emphasised with cities and their surrounding areas working in harmony.
