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Children a bit anxious and maybe loosing brain matter if your exposed to high levels of traffic pollution….

Typically, we don’t associate a child’s behavior with air pollution however, it might be time to increase our awareness of pollutions impact.

Loosing Brain Matter:

At the beginning of this year the researchers at the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center published additional work on the issues of how traffic related pollution impacts our children entitled, “Reduced gray matter volume and cortical thickness associated with traffic-related air pollution in a longitudinally studied pediatric cohort” in the PLOS One Journal. Basically how pollution was challenging our children’s brain development. Their initial work documented a change in the neurochemistry of the brain resulting in increased anxiety in otherwise healthy preadolescence. (see below)

The current work should sound the alarms in even more ways as this work shows a decrease in brain volume if your child is exposed at birth to the traffic pollution. Most disturbing is the combination of both white and gray matter loss, translating that means that both physical controls as well as seeing, hearing and sensory perception were affected.

Anxiety:

A 2019 study done at the University of Cincinnati and published in the Journal Environmental Research,  associated a brain chemical that is found to increase anxiety in children with higher levels of exposure to traffic related air pollution.

They evaluated 145 healthy children who averaged 12 years of age who had been exposed to traffic related air pollution. The pre-adolescents were tested for their anxiety levels using standardized testing and an MRI to determine the level of a number of neurochemicals present.

There appears a clear association between  a chemical called myo-inositol and the traffic caused pollution resulting in higher levels of anxiety.

Living near a highway or other traffic congested area may be injurious to your child’s short- and long-term health and ability to develop to their full potential.

EPA and our Govenment:

Recent research in Science Advances, where  the authors analyzed data from 68.5 million people enrolled in the Medicare health insurance program that data stretched across 16 years, indicates that strengthening the current air pollution standards in the U.S., from its current maximum of 12 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3) per year to 10 μg/m3 per year (the World Health Organization’s recommended level), could save 143,257 american lives over the next 10 years?   Thats a lot of folks !

Take Aways:

  • Avoid high traffic concentration when choosing where to live.
  • If you’re near a high traffic zone, close the windows and invest in a high-grade air filter system.
  • When driving use, the recirculating option for heating or cooling, once your car is aired out.
  • Purchase plants that can reduce your indoor exposure to pollutants.
  • Consider investing in a real hepa based vacuum system.
  • Mimimize the amount of air pollution in your home, see this article: “Indoor Air Quality more important than ever !”
  • Go to less or non-polluted areas often.
  • Don’t ride your bike along the highway or other congested area

 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0228092

Study Links Air Pollution to Childhood Anxiety

Thu, 05/23/2019 – 10:30am

by University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center

Exposure to air pollution is a well-established global health problem associated with complications for people with asthma and respiratory disease, as well as heart conditions and an increased risk of stroke, and according to the World Health Organization, is responsible for millions of deaths annually. Emerging evidence now suggests that air pollution may also impact the metabolic and neurological development of children.

A study from researchers at the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center looks at the correlation between exposure to traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) and childhood anxiety, by looking at the altered neurochemistry in pre-adolescents.

“Recent evidence suggests the central nervous system is particularly vulnerable to air pollution, suggesting a role in the etiology of mental disorders, like anxiety or depression,” Kelly Brunst, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health at the College of Medicine, and lead author on the study, said. “This is the first study to use neuroimaging to evaluate TRAP exposure, metabolite dysregulation in the brain and generalized anxiety symptoms among otherwise healthy children.”

The study was published by the journal Environmental Research and is available online.

The researchers evaluated imaging of 145 children at an average age of 12 years, looking specifically at the levels of myo-inositol found in the brain through a specialized MRI technique, magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Myo-inositol is a naturally-occurring metabolite mainly found in specialized brain cells known as glial cells, that assists with maintaining cell volume and fluid balance in the brain, and serves as a regulator for hormones and insulin in the body. Increases in myo-inositol levels correlate with an increased population of glial cells, which often occurs in states of inflammation.

They found that, among those exposed to higher levels of recent TRAP, there were significant increases of myo-inositol in the brain, compared to those with lower TRAP exposure. They also observed increases in myo-inositol to be associated with more generalized anxiety symptoms.

“In the higher, recent exposure group, we saw a 12 percent increase in anxiety symptoms,” Brunst said.

Brunst noted however, that the observed increase in reported generalized anxiety symptoms in this cohort of typically developing children was relatively small and are not likely to result in a clinical diagnosis of an anxiety disorder.

“However, I think it can speak to a bigger impact on population health … that increased exposure to air pollution can trigger the brain’s inflammatory response, as evident by the increases we saw in myo-inositol,” Brunst said. “This may indicate that certain populations are at an increased risk for poorer anxiety outcomes.”