It would be if it was only pollution but my understanding it’s pm2.5 in general. Rural areas can and do have high pm2.5. Look at the map. It could be agriculture or dust or flora.
In my opinion, the reason air pollution effects dementia risk is through activation of Heat Shock Proteins and I think it is the most valuable place to be investing in research.
Heat Shock Proteins in Alzheimer’s Disease: Role and Targeting
Dementia rates in Miami Dade are among the highest in the country while Utah is on the low end. What is striking is that Utah has worse air quality, which is a known risk factor, yet still shows lower prevalence.
Dementia isn’t caused by one single factor, as far as we know.
Studies like this show that air quality is correlated with dementia in general, but we don’t know if that means air quality directly contributes to dementia or if air quality just happens to be correlated with something else that contributes to dementia.
As for Utah: They have lower rates of drinking and drug use and higher levels of physical fitness and outdoor activity, among other factors.
Utah’s average air quality also isn’t as bad as you hear about. The mountain geography can trap pollution on certain winter days, but the average air quality in Salt Lake City is surprisingly better than most metro areas with 500K or more people: https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/03/26/air-qu...
> In 2023, Salt Lake had the 11th-lowest average particulate matter levels, known as PM2.5, of 103 cities reviewed by IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company.
I'd like to know the effects of air pollution on at risk populations that use inhalable drugs or smoke as well. I believe the results would be much worse.
EDIT commenting to child so as not to start a flame war. Lung scarring, emphasema, bronchial illness and so forth can cause the lungs to trap particulates in the lungs longer than they should over the long term this exacerbating health risks. It definitely makes sense.
Why do they show a picture of polluted India with people wearing masks and have some kind of skin thing going on, and then go on to show a heat map of PM2.5 rates across the USA, where the most polluted areas are nowhere near as polluted as non-western cities/countries [1].
Why do we never talk about the fact that the post polluted areas are not at all in the European civilization block, i.e., they are Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Chad, and the DR of Congo. So they should also have the highest rates of dementia if this research holds, right?
This all just seems like gaslighting lies, manipulation, and abuse.
This article repeats the common mistake of conflating correlations and causality. The main results are (1) that PM2.5 exposure is correlated with dementia in humans, (2) some experimental results with mice. This does not establish causality in humans. The paper is careful to stay juuuust on the right side of the line by carefully using "associated" in the right places. But the press release discards that pretense at rigor and jumps straight to full-on claims of causality in people:
> Long-term exposure accelerates the development of Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease with dementia in people who are predisposed to the conditions.
I think it's entirely possible (perhaps even likely) that this is true. But the paper does not show it.
The Parkinson's Plan talks extensively about the risk factors associated with the disease, and discussed the link between air pollution and the disease. They say that it is a trigger / cause that only sometimes works for reasons unknown (paraphrasing). Is a "sometimes cause" still causal?
(OP makes a good point, just going on a slight tangent here)
We really need a term that sits between correlation and causation in situations where data is difficult to come by. There's such a huge rift of meaning between these terms, and too often 'correlation is not causation' gets wheeled out in a room of people that already know that and are trying to figure out the nuances.
How about plausal? Aka it's rather plausible that there is a causal relationship between two things but causality is hard to prove.
"Air quality and dementia have a plausal relationship".
The bar for plausation is much lower, yet many correlates still won't meet it. "Bad air quality causes dementia" is a categorically different statement than "ice cream sales cause shark attacks", if we establish the category of plausal relationships.
Anyone knowledgable on this research area able to enlighten me on how pesticides are included (nor not) in these air particulate studies? In my head PM studies are primality focused on combusted stuff? Do pesticides factor into PM readings in a geography? I ask because I seem to recall there being some articles linking pesticides to dementia/Parkinson.
There are around 50k public air quality sensors globally that publish pm2.5 measurements. Still, there are no good air quality forecasts. In my two home cities (Dublin and Stockholm), there are 30-50 public sensors.
The first exercise in my O'Reilly book (released next month) is to build a pm25 forecast using basic ML (features are weather and lagged air quality). Code is available here:
So … Beijing , Mumbai or Uulanbaatar habitants will face grim future ? Idk there are cities with decades of terrible air with PM25 way above 200 , but I never hear of such drastic developments ?
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 47.0 ms ] thread(And this says nothing about the effects of noise pollution or aesthetic pollution)
EDIT
Oh come on, it's the obvious conclusion. So discuss already.
Even if you think climate change is a hoax, why not reduce pollution anyway?
Looking carefully at your cooking situation is worthwhile though. Was horrified by the spike in readings from stuff like steak in a pan
Heat Shock Proteins in Alzheimer’s Disease: Role and Targeting
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6163571/
I don't doubt it and they could expect other implications if the pollution also included heavy metals and other chemicals in the air, water and land.
Why is that?
Studies like this show that air quality is correlated with dementia in general, but we don’t know if that means air quality directly contributes to dementia or if air quality just happens to be correlated with something else that contributes to dementia.
As for Utah: They have lower rates of drinking and drug use and higher levels of physical fitness and outdoor activity, among other factors.
Utah’s average air quality also isn’t as bad as you hear about. The mountain geography can trap pollution on certain winter days, but the average air quality in Salt Lake City is surprisingly better than most metro areas with 500K or more people: https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/03/26/air-qu...
> In 2023, Salt Lake had the 11th-lowest average particulate matter levels, known as PM2.5, of 103 cities reviewed by IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company.
Potentially related
https://m.slashdot.org/story/446420
EDIT commenting to child so as not to start a flame war. Lung scarring, emphasema, bronchial illness and so forth can cause the lungs to trap particulates in the lungs longer than they should over the long term this exacerbating health risks. It definitely makes sense.
Why do we never talk about the fact that the post polluted areas are not at all in the European civilization block, i.e., they are Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Chad, and the DR of Congo. So they should also have the highest rates of dementia if this research holds, right?
This all just seems like gaslighting lies, manipulation, and abuse.
[1] https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-air-pollution-l...
> Long-term exposure accelerates the development of Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease with dementia in people who are predisposed to the conditions.
I think it's entirely possible (perhaps even likely) that this is true. But the paper does not show it.
We really need a term that sits between correlation and causation in situations where data is difficult to come by. There's such a huge rift of meaning between these terms, and too often 'correlation is not causation' gets wheeled out in a room of people that already know that and are trying to figure out the nuances.
How about plausal? Aka it's rather plausible that there is a causal relationship between two things but causality is hard to prove.
"Air quality and dementia have a plausal relationship".
The bar for plausation is much lower, yet many correlates still won't meet it. "Bad air quality causes dementia" is a categorically different statement than "ice cream sales cause shark attacks", if we establish the category of plausal relationships.
The first exercise in my O'Reilly book (released next month) is to build a pm25 forecast using basic ML (features are weather and lagged air quality). Code is available here:
https://github.com/featurestorebook/mlfs-book/