LifestylePollution makes you crazy: 2 hours of exposure to exhaust gas alters brain connectivity

Pollution makes you crazy: 2 hours of exposure to exhaust gas alters brain connectivity

Discoveries about the harmful effects of pollution are more and more frequent: cancer, autoimmune diseases, depression or strokes are added another disastrous consequence of inhaling polluting gases: the decline in brain connectivity.

It is the discovery made by scientists from the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the University of Victoria and published in the journal Environmental Health. The study warns of the danger of breathing the smoke from the exhaust pipe of your car: you dumbfounded in just a couple of hours, the report warns.

To reach this conclusion, a randomized double-blind trial of 25 healthy adults exposed to car pollution in a laboratory. In another phase, the participants were also exposed to clean filtered air.

Through brain scans before and after being exposed to contamination, it was possible to verify a reduced connectivity in the default mode network (DMN)a set of interconnected brain regions that are most active when we engage in internal thoughts, such as introspection and recollection.

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“It’s worrying that traffic pollution disrupts these very networks,” says neuropsychologist Jodie Gawryluk of the University of Victoria. The positive side is that the alterations detected were temporary, since brain activity returned to normal once clean air flowed again through the lungs.

However, looking at the long term, it is another data that confirms that chronic exposure to pollution —something that 99% of the world population suffers from— causes deleterious effects on cognition, concentration or mood.

In fact, in China a study has linked air pollution with worse results in language and mathematics examssubtracting an average educational year.

“This study, which is the first of its kind in the world, provides new evidence supporting a connection between air pollution and cognition,” says UBC pulmonologist Chris Carlsten.

More research sheds light on the risk of pollution in the brain: in 2020 Alzheimer’s markers were detected in young people, children and babies in polluted Mexico City, while other studies discovered the origin in metallic nanoparticles from air pollution in the brain of the inhabitants, capable of crossing the protective brain barrier.

What consequences can have inhaling smoke from the gases from the exhaust pipes? Previous scientific evidence has found links between impaired brain connectivity and decreased working memory and job performance.

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