Heavy traffic pollution may affect kids’ brain development

Posted on January 29, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

High levels of exposure to traffic-related air pollution at a very young age may lead to structural changes in the brain, a new imaging study suggests.

Brain scans of 12-year-old children show reduced thickness of the cortex and decreased gray matter volume in those who lived less than a quarter of a mile (400 meters) from a major highway at age 1, according to a report in PLoS ONE.

“The take-home message is that the quality of air we breathe matters, especially to our children,” said lead author Travis Beckwith, a research fellow at the Imaging Research Center at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio.

Having a thinner cortex and less gray matter may suggest there are fewer brain cells and fewer connections in the brain, Beckwith said in an email.

“This, in turn, can alter or impair function, depending on where it is located and when this is occurring,” Beckwith said. “A question we haven’t answered yet is whether these results are the brain failing to develop properly or if brain cells are dying due to exposure. If it’s a developmental problem, it’s possible the brain can rewire itself to compensate. If established cells are dying, the change in function can be more pronounced and possibly permanent.”

The areas of the brain that appear to be most impacted are the primary motor and sensory cortex, Beckwith said. “The primary motor cortex is responsible for planning out movements and the execution of those movements,” he explained. “The primary sensory cortex (is involved in) tactile senses, such as how things feel, sensing temperature and vibrations as well as identifying objects based on touch.”

The cerebellum – which handles a lot of fine tuning in motor control and which may play a role in regulating emotions and behavior as well – was also largely affected, Beckwith said.

To take a closer look at the possible impact of traffic-related air pollution, Beckwith and his colleagues performed MRI scans on 135 kids participating in a larger research project, the Cincinnati Childhood Allergy and Air Pollution Study, or CCAAPS. That long-term study recruited the families of children younger than 6 months old to examine the health impact of early childhood exposure to air pollution.

Children participating in CCAAPS were brought to the clinic at ages 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 12 years. During each visit, caregivers filled out questionnaires that asked about the children’s health, general wellbeing, housing characteristics and residential history. At age 12, the children were assessed on reading ability, executive function, mental health, intelligence and other neurodevelopmental outcomes. They were also given MRI scans.

Pollution exposure for each child was estimated using data from an air sampling network that included 27 sites in the Cincinnati area.

For the new study, Beckwith and colleagues compared children with the highest exposure to traffic related air pollution during the first year of life, based on residential address, to those with the lowest exposure.

After accounting for other factors that could influence brain development, including maternal IQ and neighborhood poverty level, the researchers found that children exposed to the highest pollution levels had thinner cortexes compared to those with little pollution exposure.

The new findings confirm and extend what’s been seen in other imaging studies, said Darby Jack, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. “This is one more piece in a very important puzzle,” Jack said.

Other studies have found that children exposed to high levels of traffic-related pollution tend to perform poorly on standardized tests, Jack said. “This study is getting us one step closer to understanding the underlying biology.”

A limitation of this and other studies on pollution and brain development is that children living in areas with high pollution tend to be poorer than those who get to breathe clean air, Jack noted. But the fact that only certain brain areas appear to be affected suggests it’s actually the pollution exposure that is altering the brain, he added.

Taken as a whole, the research connecting pollution to changes in brain development “is getting quite convincing,” Jack said.

SOUREC: bit.ly/2RV8gCu PLoS ONE, online January 24, 2020.

via Heavy traffic pollution may affect kids’ brain development – Reuters

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Red Sea huge source of air pollution, greenhouse gases: study

Posted on January 29, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

Hydrocarbon gases bubbling from the bottom of the Red Sea are polluting the atmosphere at a rate equivalent to the emissions of some large fossil fuel exporting countries, researchers said Tuesday.

The gases seeping from the waters — which are ringed by the resorts and ports of several countries, including Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — then mix with emissions from industrial shipping and turned into noxious pollutants that are very harmful to human health.

The Middle East holds more than half of the world’s oil and gas reserves and the intense fossil fuel exploitation that takes place there, and the region releases enormous amounts of gaseous pollutants into the atmosphere.

But during a 2017 expedition around the Gulf, researchers at the Max Plank Institute for Chemistry noticed that levels of ethane and propane in the air above the Northern Red Sea were up to 40 times higher than predicted, even accounting for regional manmade emissions.

The team analysed possible sources for the gas emissions, including traffic, agriculture, burning of biomass, and power generation from hydrocarbons.

They came to an unexpected conclusion: the two gases had to be seeping out of the sea bed after escaping natural subterranean oil and gas reservoirs.

They were then carried by currents to the surface, where they mix with another greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, which is emitted in high amounts by industrial shipping.

The resulting gas compounds are extremely harmful to human health, according to the team’s study, published in Nature Communications.

“I have to admit that I was surprised myself with these results,” lead author Efstratios Boursoukidis told AFP.

“We spent almost two years working on this dataset to confidently prove that the emissions were coming some two kilometres below the sea surface.”

The team calculated that the rate of ethane and propane leakage was “comparable in magnitude” to those of several hydrocarbon exporting nations, such as the United Arab Emirates or Kuwait.

The emissions result in another source of atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas, the study said.

The situation is exacerbated by nitrous oxide pollution from the large number of shipping containers passing through the northern Red Sea, one of Earth’s busiest transport lanes.

And it’s only likely to get worse as the route gets busier.

“In the coming decades, ship traffic through the Red Sea and Suez Canal is expected to continue to increase, with a concomitant rise in nitrogen oxide emissions,” said Boursoukidis.

“We expect that such increase will amplify the role of this source, leading to significant deterioration of the regional air quality.”

via Red Sea huge source of air pollution, greenhouse gases: study – France 24

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Air pollution impacts can be heart-stopping: Biggest study of dangerously small particulate matter and cardiac arrest

Posted on January 28, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

There is an increased risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) even from short-term exposure to low concentrations of fine particulate matter PM2.5, an international study has found, noting an association with gaseous pollutants such as those from coal burning/mining, bushfires and motor vehicles.

The nationwide study of data from Japan, chosen for its superior monitoring, population density and relative air quality, is believed to be by far the largest of its kind. It provides comprehensive evidence of the relationship between PM2.5 and cardiac arrests, using a sample three times larger than all previous research combined and demonstrating the impacts on groups such as the elderly.

The study led by the University of Sydney concludes that worldwide, standards should be tightened; the implications also point to the need for cleaner energy sources.

The findings publish today in the high-impact journal The Lancet Planetary Health.

The corresponding and senior author, from the University of Sydney School of Medicine, Professor Kazuaki Negishi, said previous research into air pollution and acute cardiac events had been inconsistent, especially at air concentrations that met or bettered the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.

Inconsistencies in previous data were addressed through the size and robustness of this study, which found that more than 90 percent of OHCAs occurred at PM2.5 levels lower than the WHO guideline (and Australian standard level), a daily-average of 25 micrograms per cubic metre (?g/m3). As well, 98 percent of OHCAs happened at levels lower than the Japanese or American daily standard level of 35 ?g/m3.

“Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is a major medical emergency — with less than one in 10 people worldwide surviving these events — and there has been increasing evidence of an association with the more acute air pollution, or fine particulate matter such as PM2.5,” said Professor Negishi, a cardiologist and Head of Medicine, Nepean Clinical School, at the Faculty of Medicine and Health.

“We analysed almost a quarter of a million cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and found a clear link with acute air pollution levels.

“Our study supports recent evidence that there is no safe level of air pollution — finding an increased risk of cardiac arrest despite air quality generally meeting the standards.

“Given the fact that there is a tendency towards worsening air pollution — from increasing numbers of cars as well as disasters such as bushfires — the impacts on cardiovascular events, in addition to respiratory diseases and lung cancer — must be taken into account in health care responses.”

Professor Negishi, who previously conducted field work after the 2014 massive Hazelwood coal mine fire in Victoria, said that where cardiovascular impacts were concerned, those generally at risk were the elderly: “If you’re young and healthy, there should be no immediate risk of devastating consequence.” However, he highlights these findings are only in relation to the short-term and that the effects can last for up to five years.

The paper concludes that there is an “urgent” need to improve air quality. “As no boundary exists in air quality among countries, a global approach to tackle this crucial health issue is necessary for our planet,” the authors state.

Research key findings and what it means

The study drew upon data from Japan because the country keeps comprehensive records of its air pollution levels as well as a high-quality, nationwide repository of OHCA.

The researchers found a 1- 4 percent increased risk associated with every 10 ?g/m3 increase in PM2.5.

Put another way, Sydney has recently been experiencing increased air pollution because of bushfire smoke and, on its worst day PM2.5 surpassed the standard of 25 ?g/m3 to jump to more than 500 ?g/m3 in the suburb of Richmond, comparable to levels of continuous cigarette smoking. There are about 15,000 OHCAs annually in Australia so in a hypothetical situation, if there is a 10-unit increase in the daily average of PM2.5, it could lead to another 600 OHCAs resulting in 540 deaths (10% survival rate globally).

The Lancet Planetary Health paper compared OHCA that occurred up to three days after the air pollution recorded; however, the effects on the heart can occur up to five-seven days after acute air pollution, Professor Negishi says, so the entire cardiovascular impacts could be worse than indicated.

Also analysed were the impacts regarding sex and age.

Although the impacts did not divide along gender lines, for people aged over 65, PM2.5 exposure was significantly associated with incidence of all-cause OHCA.

The data revealed an association between short-term exposure to carbon monoxide, photochemical oxidants and sulphur dioxide and all-cause OHCA but not with nitrogen dioxide. Professor Negishi explains that it was likely that the levels of nitrogen dioxide, for example from car emissions, were not high enough to result in OHCA.

Adding to known impacts of air pollution on cardiovascular mortality generally, this study plugs important gaps in knowledge about the effects of short-term exposure to acute air pollution on OHCA.

The authors state: “Combined with air quality forecasts, our results can be used to predict this emergency condition and to allocate our resources more efficiently.”

Air pollution fast facts

  • There are two main sources of PM2.5 worldwide:

1. Traffic/motor vehicles

2. Bushfires (massive annual events in California and the Amazon as well as in Australia)

  • Both PM2.5 and PM10 cannot be seen by the human eye and increase the chances of cardiac arrest, meaning the heart stops, which if untreated tends to result in death within minutes.
  • Particulate matter PM10 is relatively course dust, created for example from grinding operations and stirred up on roads; in comparison, PM2.5 is fine particulate matter, which can travel further into the body and stay for longer.
  • The most dangerous air pollution is PM2.5 — fine particulate matter that measures about 3 percent the diameter of a human hair.

This research is a collaboration between the University of Sydney, the University of Tasmania/Menzies Institute for Medical Research, Monash University, the University Centre for Rural Health in Australia and Gunma University in Japan.

via Air pollution impacts can be heart-stopping: Biggest study of dangerously small particulate matter and cardiac arrest — ScienceDaily

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Living near major roads linked to risk of dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and MS

Posted on January 24, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

Living near major roads or highways is linked to higher incidence of dementia, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis (MS), suggests new research published this week in the journal Environmental Health.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia analyzed data for 678,000 adults in Metro Vancouver. They found that living less than 50 metres from a major road or less than 150 metres from a highway is associated with a higher risk of developing dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and MS — likely due to increased exposure to air pollution.

The researchers also found that living near green spaces, like parks, has protective effects against developing these neurological disorders.

“For the first time, we have confirmed a link between air pollution and traffic proximity with a higher risk of dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and MS at the population level,” says Weiran Yuchi, the study’s lead author and a PhD candidate in the UBC school of population and public health. “The good news is that green spaces appear to have some protective effects in reducing the risk of developing one or more of these disorders. More research is needed, but our findings do suggest that urban planning efforts to increase accessibility to green spaces and to reduce motor vehicle traffic would be beneficial for neurological health.”

Neurological disorders — a term that describes a range of disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and motor neuron diseases — are increasingly recognized as one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. Little is known about the risk factors associated with neurological disorders, the majority of which are incurable and typically worsen over time.

For the study, researchers analyzed data for 678,000 adults between the ages of 45 and 84 who lived in Metro Vancouver from 1994 to 1998 and during a follow-up period from 1999 to 2003. They estimated individual exposures to road proximity, air pollution, noise and greenness at each person’s residence using postal code data. During the follow-up period, the researchers identified 13,170 cases of non-Alzheimer’s dementia, 4,201 cases of Parkinson’s disease, 1,277 cases of Alzheimer’s disease and 658 cases of MS.

For non-Alzheimer’s dementia and Parkinson’s disease specifically, living near major roads or a highway was associated with 14 per cent and seven per cent increased risk of both conditions, respectively. Due to relatively low numbers of Alzheimer’s and MS cases in Metro Vancouver compared to non-Alzheimer’s dementia and Parkinson’s disease, the researchers did not identify associations between air pollution and increased risk of these two disorders. However, they are now analyzing Canada-wide data and are hopeful the larger dataset will provide more information on the effects of air pollution on Alzheimer’s disease and MS.

When the researchers accounted for green space, they found the effect of air pollution on the neurological disorders was mitigated. The researchers suggest that this protective effect could be due to several factors.

“For people who are exposed to a higher level of green space, they are more likely to be physically active and may also have more social interactions,” said Michael Brauer, the study’s senior author and professor in the UBC school of population and public health. “There may even be benefits from just the visual aspects of vegetation.”

Brauer added that the findings underscore the importance for city planners to ensure they incorporate greenery and parks when planning and developing residential neighbourhoods.

The study was co-authored by Hind Sbihi, Hugh Davies, and Lillian Tamburic in the UBC school of population and public health.

via Living near major roads linked to risk of dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and MS — ScienceDaily

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Global Transport of Australian Bushfire Smoke – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

Posted on January 24, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd
In this video, different aerosols are highlighted by color, including dust (orange), sea salt (blue), nitrates (pink) and carbonaceous (red), with brighter regions corresponding to higher aerosol amounts.

This animation shows several high impact events across the globe between August 2019 and January 2020, including Hurricane Dorian (August to September 2019), major fire events in South America and Indonesia (August to September 2019), and extreme wildfires in Australia (December 2019 to January 2020).

The local impacts of the Australian bushfires have been devastating to property and life in the country, while producing extreme air quality impacts throughout the region.

As smoke from the massive fires has interacted with global weather, the transport of smoke plumes around the globe has accelerated into the upper troposphere and even the lowermost stratosphere, leading to long-range transport around the globe.

The smoke from these bushfires will travel across the Southern Ocean, completing a global circumnavigation back around to Australia, and is particularly pronounced across the southern Pacific Ocean out to South America.

via Global Transport of Australian Bushfire Smoke – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Air pollution in New York City linked to wildfires hundreds of miles away

Posted on January 23, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

A new study shows that air pollutants from the smoke of fires from as far as Canada and the southeastern U.S. traveled hundreds of miles and several days to reach Connecticut and New York City, where it caused significant increases in pollution concentrations.

For the study, published 21 January in the European Geosciences Union (EGU) journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, researchers in the lab of Drew Gentner, associate professor of chemical & environmental engineering, monitored the air quality at the Yale Coastal Field Station in Guilford, CT and four other sites in the New York metropolitan area. In August of 2018, they observed two spikes in the presence of air pollutants — both coinciding with New York-area air quality advisories for ozone. The pollutants were the kind found in the smoke of wildfires and controlled agricultural burning. Using three types of evidence — data from the observation sites, smoke maps from satellite imagery, and backtracking 3-D models of air parcels (both the maps and models were produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) — the researchers traced the pollutants’ origin in the first event to fires on the western coast of Canada, and in the second event to the southeastern U.S.

Biomass burning, which occurs on a large scale during wildfires and some controlled burns, is a major source of air pollutants that impact air quality, human health, and climate. These events release numerous gases into the atmosphere and produce particulate matter (PM), including black carbon (BC) and other primary organic aerosols (POA) with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers. Known as PM2.5, it has been shown to have particularly serious health effects when inhaled.

While more reactive components are often chemically transformed closer to their place of origin, PM2.5 tends to last longer. In the case of this study, that allowed much of it to travel from the fires to the monitoring sites — a period ranging from a few days to about a week.

“Given the sensitivity of people to the health effects emerging from exposure to PM2.5, this is certainly something that needs to be considered as policy-makers put together long-term air quality management plans,” Gentner said.

The impacts of wildfire smoke will likely become increasingly important in the coming years.

“When people are making predictions about climate change, they’re predicting increases in wildfires, so this sort of pollution is likely going to become more common,” said lead author Haley Rogers, who was an undergraduate student when the study was conducted. “So when people are planning for air pollution and health impacts, you can’t just address local sources.”

Although the levels of the PM2.5 decreased over time and distance, co-author Jenna Ditto, a graduate student in Gentner’s lab, noted that awareness of its presence in the atmosphere is critical to public health.

“Studies indicate that there are no safe levels of PM2.5, so typically any level of it is worth taking a look at,” she said.

via Air pollution in New York City linked to wildfires hundreds of miles away — ScienceDaily

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Air pollution’s tiny particles may trigger nonfatal heart attacks

Posted on January 21, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

A Yale-affiliated scientist finds that even a few hours’ exposure to ambient ultrafine particles common in air pollution may potentially trigger a nonfatal heart attack.

Myocardial infarction (MI) is a major form of cardiovascular disease worldwide. Ultrafine particles (UFP) are 100 nanometers or smaller in size. In urban areas, automobile emissions are the primary source of UFP.

The study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives is believed to be the first epidemiological investigation of the effects of UFP exposure and heart attacks using the number of particles and the particle length and surface area concentrations at hourly intervals of exposure.

“This study confirms something that has long been suspected—air pollution’s tiny particles can play a role in serious heart disease. This is particularly true within the first few hours of exposure,” said Kai Chen, Ph.D., assistant professor at Yale School of Public Health and the study’s first author. “Elevated levels of UFP are a serious public health concern.”

UFP constitute a health risk due to their small size, large surface areas per unit of mass, and their ability to penetrate the cells and get into the blood system. “We were the first to demonstrate the effects of UFP on the health of asthmatics in an epidemiological study in the 1990s,” said Annette Peters, director of the Institute of Epidemiology at Helmholtz Center Munich and a co-author of this paper. “Since then approximately 200 additional studies have been published. However, epidemiological evidence remains inconsistent and insufficient to infer a causal relationship.”

The lack of consistent findings across epidemiological studies may be in part because of the different size ranges and exposure metrics examined to characterize ambient UFP exposure. Chen and his co-authors were interested in whether transient UFP exposure could trigger heart attacks and whether alternative metrics such as particle length and surface area concentrations could improve the investigation of UFP-related health effects.

With colleagues from Helmholtz Center Munich, Augsburg University Hospital and Nördlingen Hospital, Chen examined data from a registry of all nonfatal MI cases in Augsburg, Germany. The study looked at more than 5, 898 nonfatal heart attack patients between 2005 and 2015. The individual heart attacks were compared against air pollution UFP data on the hour of the heart attack and adjusted for a range of additional factors, such as the day of the week, long-term time trend and socioeconomic status.

“This represents an important step toward understanding the appropriate indicator of ultrafine particles exposure in determining the short-term health effects, as the effects of particle length and surface concentrations were stronger than the ones of particle number concentration and remained similar after adjustment for other air pollutants,” said Chen. “Our future analyses will examine the combined hourly exposures to both air pollution and extreme temperature. We will also identify vulnerable subpopulations regarding pre-existing diseases and medication intake.”

via Air pollution’s tiny particles may trigger nonfatal heart attacks

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Brazilian wildfire pollution worsens air quality in distant cities – study

Posted on January 21, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

Wildfires in south eastern Brazil produce airborne pollution that worsens air quality in major cities such as Sao Paulo – cancelling out efforts to improve the urban environment and posing health risks to citizens, according to a new study.

The planet is frequently affected by smoke from fires caused by humans and natural processes. Australia, California and other regions are prone to seasonal wildfires and smoke from wildfires and agricultural burns worsening air quality in places up to 2,000 km away.

Most wildfires in Brazil occur in the dry season between July and September in the areas of Amazon and Cerrado – mostly agriculture-related fires – and the Pampas. Depending on the weather, long-range transport of smoke affects the air quality of small and large cities downwind of the fire spots, including the ‘megacity’ of Sao Paulo.

Burning biomass produces increased quantities of low-lying ozone due, in part, to the South Atlantic subtropical high pressure system. Transported considerable distances from the fire, this pollution further contribute to poor air quality and smog in cities such as Sao Paulo.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham, the Federal University of Technology, Londrina, Brazil, and the University of Stockholm published their findings in the Journal of Environmental Management.

Professor Roy Harrison, from the University of Birmingham, commented: “The state of Sao Paulo has led with progressive measures to curb air pollution, such as controlling sulphur dioxide from industrial sources and enforcing standards for cleaner vehicles and fuels.

“However, present results indicate that policies targeting the reduction of biomass burning are of utmost importance to improve urban air quality, particularly in densely populated areas where high pollutant concentrations are frequently observed.”

Besides affecting air quality and increasing the risk of death from respiratory causes, ozone is a short-lived climate forcer – an atmospheric compound with a warming effect but with a shorter lifetime than carbon dioxide. Reducing ozone levels has two main benefits: reducing impact on air quality and climate.

Atmospheric emission data suggests that emissions from biomass burning make up a substantial part of the precursors for O3 formation.

Dr. Admir Créso Targino, from the Federal University of Technology, commented: “We need enhanced governance at regional, national and international levels to combat biomass burning practices in Brazil and its neighbouring countries.

Not only would the population health benefit from such a measure, but also the regional climate, as ozone and particulate matter generated by the fires are short-lived climate forcers. Such an approach would be well-aligned with the Paris Agreement that aims to limit global warming to below 2OC compared to the pre-industrial period – a critical measure in the fight against climate change.”

Researchers combined in situ ozone data, measured in the states of Sao Paulo and Parana from 2014 to 2017, with information about a range of co-pollutants such as NOx, PM2.5 and PM10 to identify sources, transport and geographical patterns in the air pollution data.

Ozone concentrations peaked in September and October – linked to biomass burning and enhanced photochemistry. Long-range transport of smoke contributed to between 23 and 41 per cent of the total ozone during the pollution events.

via Brazilian wildfire pollution worsens air quality in distant cities – study

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