The level of air quality moves down, alarmingly from the past two years. It is the same story around India’s festivities, which is from November till December. The weather almost seems foggy, but the reality is undoubtedly a bitter one.
With the beginning of certain agricultural activities, the air quality index goes down at a level where the red parameter indicates danger for everyone. The time has come again, where all the metro cities in India are downpoured into the smoggy air.
In 2017, a report showed a concerning rate of deaths due to polluted air in India. Of the total number of deaths, 12.5 percent of people died due to low air quality around cities, and according to a report drawn out by the Centre for Disease Control & Prevention in 2014, about a total of 5 million people in the United States were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease due to low level of air quality.
As we move further into analyzing how bad this polluted air for people around in the city, there is a recent discovery about the possibility of bad air quality with specific neurodegenerative disease markers, affecting young and old both.
The research was part of the Environmental Research Journal. The experts have pointed explicitly out the need to protect the young from these increasing level smogs in cities, which could cause a global group of neurodegenerative pandemic.
The Findings of Research and link to pollution
The experts have deeply analyzed the workings of our environment that we live in and how it affects a young individual’s neurological abilities. People in parts of India, specifically in Delhi, have made a note in the past one week that not only is the smog-causing them difficulty in breathing, but there is sudden itchiness all around the body.
The tendency to cause diseases like Alzheimer’s and motor neuron disease is present in the air we breathe right now, and individual microparticles available in the combusting air coming out of vehicles on the road.
Experts have also mentioned a theory that these neurodegenerative diseases are likely to occur in an individual either genetically or depending on specific environmental conditions. But finding a fundamental cause of it is still under the radar.
The study conducted on the association of air pollution and neurodegenerative disease could carve out the exact damage in individuals’ brain stems. Since the scholars didn’t know the defined impact of pollution on motor neurons and Parkinson’s disease, they wanted to identify it. The research performed on deceased people has an age range of 11 months to 40 years.
The researchers were looking for any air polluted microparticles in the brain stems of the deceased individual. The autopsies conducted on some people were just after their death. The elements taken from these bodies ranged from the year 2004 to 2008. According to reports, the collected material from these deceased individuals’ brains was stored at -80°C till the time it was analyzed & examined by the scholar.
The result of the Study
Air purity does matter for people since environmental factors also play a vital role in forming our organs’ better and smooth functioning. But the end-result of the conducted study made the experts prove their hypotheses that the dead participants on whom the research was conducted had markers of Alzheimer’s disease, motor neuron disease, and Parkinson’s disease.
The markers showed signs of nerve cell growth and misformed protein in the brain, causing tangles and plaques inside of it. The air purity was a concern for the rendering of these diseases in young individuals and the pollution emitted by a vehicle’s braking system in a red light area majorly.
The co-author of the study from Lancaster University in the UK, Professor Barbara Maher, informed that the brain’s samples included more than just elements of Alzheimer’s disease, motor neuron disease or Parkinson’s disease. There were nanoparticles of some compounds emitted by vehicle combustion such as iron, aluminum, or titanium.
The co-author mentioned that these particles were mainly visible in parts of the brain, such as the substantia nigra and cerebellum. All these particles resulted from the braking system of the vehicles, which is found in the air leading to no air purity and degrading air quality index. The Professor mentioned that,
The titanium-rich particles in the brain were different — distinctively needle-like in shape; similar particles were observed in the nerve cells of the gut wall, suggesting these particles reach the brain after being swallowed and moving from the gut into the nerve cells which connect the brain stem with the digestive system.
~ Medical News Today
More to her statement, which specifically mentioned that when her group approached and conducted a study on a young group of individuals who lived in low polluted areas, it was observable that they had less neurodegenerative elements in their brain cells or the digestive system.
The idea was that we all live in parts of cities where we are continuously exposed to bad air quality. If we take an example of India at present, the circumstances are deducing at the lowest level with something to be done very urgently. The smog in the air is released from big agricultural farms around the cities; on top of its industries and vehicles contributing their fair share of hazardous compounds in the air.
How soon would it be the beginning of the Neurodegenerative Pandemic?
The co-author of the study, professor Maher informs Medical News Today that,
it’s critical to understand the links between the nanoparticles you’re breathing in or swallowing and the impacts those metal-rich particles are then having on the different areas of your brain.
The researcher has made it crystal clear that things aren’t going to be easy for those young generations who will soon begin to step into the phase of aging. When they have inhaled their reasonable share of metallic particles present in the air, they will become more vulnerable to the occurring neurological damage.
Although authorities are trying to step into the matter and do something on this while acknowledging researchers like this, people must understand that releasing intentionally unwanted pollutants in the air is doing no good to anyone. The marine life has already begun to suffer from this. It’s not too late that amidst an ongoing pandemic, there begins a new one causing people to lose their sense of stability and memory.
