A new study from the University of Southern California on the physical effect of road pollution showed significant brain damage.
Researchers exposed mice to traffic pollution for five hours a day, three days a week, for 10 weeks. They eventually found out the test subjects’ brains showed signs of inflammation similar to premature ageing and Alzheimer’s disease.
Moreover, the neurons involved in learning and memory loss showed significant damage, and the brain neurons of developing mice did not grow as well as those not subjected to traffic particles.
The study’s senior author, Dr Caleb Finch, said these air contaminants – about 1,000th the width of a human hair – were too small to be captured by vehicle filtration systems. Humans are just as likely to inhale them, which raises the possibility of long-term brain health consequences.
Switching to electric cars would be an easy solution, although Dr Finch cautions that ''electrical generation still depends upon other combustion processes – coal – that in a larger environment contribute nanoparticles anyway''.
