A new study funded by the National Institutes of Health found long-term exposure to air pollution is linked to higher rates of dementia.
"As we experience the effects of air pollution from wildfires and other emissions locally and internationally, these findings contribute to the strong evidence needed to best inform health and policy decisions," said Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, the third largest branch of the NIH.
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Research scientists from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor collected data from nearly 28,000 adults at age 50 and interviewed them every two years between 1998 and 2016 to monitor changes in cognition and overall health.
The team correlated this data with local air quality measurements from the Environmental Protection Agency based on each study participant's address. The primary subject of the study was PM2.5, or particulate matter less than 2.5 microns.
The EPA data was supplemented by over 300 other geographic variables, including population density, emissions sources, and land use in the area.
Nearly 15% of study participants developed dementia in the 10-year study period, but the greatest rates of incident dementia, or rates of dementia within a given regional population, occurred in areas with higher air pollution.
Air pollutants from both agricultural and wildfire emissions "were robustly associated with greater rates of dementia," wrote the study's authors. Traffic and coal combustion emissions also had a greater connection to incident dementia than other forms of air pollution, such as windblown dust and other forms of energy production.
The study's authors suggest that these findings provide "further evidence supporting PM2.5 reduction as a population-based approach to promote healthy cognitive aging."
According to the EPA, exposure to particulate matter air pollution can cause a variety of cardiopulmonary problems, such as asthma, decreased lung function, irregular heartbeat, and non-fatal heart attacks. Children, pregnant women, older people, and those with pre-existing heart and lung conditions are at the most risk for complications.
What makes this study unique is not only the association between dementia and air pollution but also the specific sources of air pollution most likely to contribute to higher rates of dementia as well as the geographic distribution of the disease.
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"As NIA continues to conduct and fund studies on risk factors for dementia, these results will help inform future research, and potentially, policy interventions," said Jonathan King of NIA's Health and Retirement Survey project, a key source of data for the study.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are 5.8 million Americans living with Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia. Approximately 200,000 of those patients are under the age of 65. By 2060, the CDC estimates there will be 14 million Alzheimer's patients in the United States.