Summer is here, your windows are open and the smell wafting in is of…car exhaust and the latest wildfire. This air pollution is harmful to almost every organ, including the brain. A new study published in the journal adds another piece to this puzzle: Air pollution could be tied to worse memory.
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Researchers used a database with information about Black Americans living in California to study this. They pulled data on air pollution exposures based on home address and on scores from cognitive tests.
“The people who had been exposed to more pollution over the years had weaker semantic memory,” said Kathryn Conlon, one of the study authors and professor of epidemiology at University of California, Davis. “So really, that long-term pollution looked like it was aging the brain’s memory ahead of schedule.”
Semantic memory is how your brain stores information, such as Beijing is the capital of China, or that 2 times 2 equals 4. Other types of cognition were not affected in the study — things like being able to complete a task or recall a concert you went to last week.
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This is one of the first studies to look at pollution data over such a long period of time — almost two decades — and to find a possible link between air pollution and specific types of memory.
Conlon also hopes that by including Black Americans, a historically underrepresented population in research, future solutions will include them. Black Americans are almost twice as likely to experience dementia when compared to White Americans and are more likely to live in polluted, redlined neighborhoods.
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