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Toxic Air Pollution Particles Found In Human Brains (theguardian.com)
Damian Carrington, writing for The Guardian: Toxic nanoparticles from air pollution have been discovered in human brains in "abundant" quantities, a newly published study reveals. The detection of the particles, in brain tissue from 37 people, raises concerns because recent research has suggested links between these magnetite particles and Alzheimer's disease, while air pollution has been shown to significantly increase the risk of the disease. However, the new work is still a long way from proving that the air pollution particles cause or exacerbate Alzheimer's. "This is a discovery finding, and now what should start is a whole new examination of this as a potentially very important environmental risk factor for Alzheimer's disease," said Prof Barbara Maher, at Lancaster University, who led the new research. "Now there is a reason to go on and do the epidemiology and the toxicity testing, because these particles are so prolific and people are exposed to them." Air pollution is a global health crisis that kills more people than malaria and HIV/Aids combined and it has long been linked to lung and heart disease and strokes. But research is uncovering new impacts on health, including degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's, mental illness and reduced intelligence.
This is particularly true for Alzheimer's, where research has had several false starts trying to correlate cellular-level brain observations to the disease.
It has been - e.g., http://www.apa.org/monitor/201.... Because they're caused by ultrafine particulates (something which is harder to track relative to the larger PM10 and PM2.5), it takes long term exposure and accumulation to be better detectable. Also UFPM moves different than PM10/2.5 relative to wind, and is emitted in inconsistent ratios (e.g., from combustion across natural gas, coal, petroleum, etc.). For example, the two main sources of UFPM from driving an internal combustion vehicle are due to combustion (out of the tailpipe), and the metals released from frictional breaking. Since EVs and hybrids tend to rely on regenerative breaking and use less/no gasoline, both sources are addressed.