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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.
When you look at first world rates of cancer/Alzheimers, is this really surprising? Like, at all?
SOMETHING out there is causing it, and writing it off as a "disease of age" isn't going to bring us any closer to a solution.
Takes me back to my time working at a paint store. The company went to great lengths to make their paint formulas as environmentally safe and healthy (as low VOC) as possible for the environment/customer.
Try and tell that to the customer, though... and the response was always "that sh!t don't work" or "that sh!t don't hold up" gimme the "good stuff". We also need to convince people that this is something worth fighting/changing our ways for.
Maybe the evidence that all this pollution and who-knows-what-the-hell-else is actually showing up in our brains will be the push people need.
It should be easy to test. Extremely polluted countries or regions (Bangladesh, parts of India, parts of China) should have higher incidence or earlier onset or both of Alzheimer's if this is true. If they don't - then it must be some other factor. Perhaps it is the same thing that allows Alzheimer's to form Amyloid plaques also allows these particles to cross the blood-brain barrier? In which cause there is only correlation and no causation.