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Air pollution directly linked to increased dementia risk

nature.com

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Re: Air pollution directly linked to increased dementia risk

#51

Post by chongli »

firesteelrain wrote: post #33

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. Why is that?

Gotta control for age. Even if air pollution is a major cause of dementia, the disease takes decades to appear.

Utah has the highest birth rate and therefore the youngest population of the 50 states (median age 31.5 years). Florida is not the oldest state, but it's near the top (median age 42.7 years).

Re: Air pollution directly linked to increased dementia risk

#53

Post by _Algernon_ »

hopelite wrote: post #36

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, Pa…

Who is to say they don't? Most of those areas have a less developed health infrastructure, so I'd expect the statistics on dementia diagnoses to systemically underreport the issue.

The average age in developing countries is also lower (due to both lower life expectancy and higher birth rate) which is a further confounding value to skew the numbers. Dementia is an old people game, even if it is true that air pollution worsens it.

Re: Air pollution directly linked to increased dementia risk

#54

Post by maldonad0 »

firesteelrain wrote: post #33

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. Why is that?

Life is psychologically worse in the cities.

Re: Air pollution directly linked to increased dementia risk

#55

Post by flouridist »

hopelite wrote: post #36

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, Pa…

> This all just seems like gaslighting lies, manipulation, and abuse.

The countries you give all have less than half and usually less than a third the percentage of people over 65.

Re: Air pollution directly linked to increased dementia risk

#56

Post by AvAn12 »

firesteelrain wrote: post #33

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. Why is that?

Also need to adjust for moving. A lot of people retire to Florida but would have accumulated exposures in wherever they lived most of their working life.

Re: Air pollution directly linked to increased dementia risk

#57

Post by amanaplanacanal »

swayvil wrote: post #2

Therefore city dwellers are demented and rural dwellers aren't. (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.

It depends. Pollution can be higher in the cities, or it can be higher in areas with high wildfire risk, or it can depend on specific geography which traps polluted air. You have to look at each case individually.

For example, in my state there is a specific more rural area which has a high incidence if heating with wood stoves, and they have higher air pollution that other more urban areas.

Another possibility is that urban areas are richer on average, and therefore might have better air filtration systems in homes and businesses than poorer rural areas. You can't tell without actually gathering the data.

Re: Air pollution directly linked to increased dementia risk

#58

Post by jader201 »

Taek wrote: post #43
jodrellblank wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The raw PM2.5 values also skyrocket with just boiling tap water, on my Ikea Vindstyrka. Which makes me question how useful it is, presumably even with "dry" cooking a lot of meats and vegetables have water in them? https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/vindstyrka-air-quality-sensor-s...

It's actually not been established (at least, to the best of my knowledge) that PM2.5 caused by water vapor is any less harmful than other types of PM2.5 particulates. And sure, yes, it's just water and its entirely plausible that water based PM2.5 is completely harmless... but wouldn't it be good to know that for sure?

Wouldn't that suggest that, at least to some degree, dementia would be elevated in humid vs. dry climates?

Re: Air pollution directly linked to increased dementia risk

#59

Post by jader201 »

Havoc wrote: post #4

Only so much you can do about ambient pollution in your city. Looking carefully at your cooking situation is worthwhile though. Was horrified by the spike in readings from stuff like steak in a pan

Wouldn't we see dementia occurrence higher among cooks, then? Or do we?

Re: Air pollution directly linked to increased dementia risk

#60

Post by bitmasher9 »

dynm wrote: post #50

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…

Why is this brought up here every time an association article is mentioned, every undergraduate that took a statistics course has covered the difference between correlation and causation.

We do population level correlation studies because sometimes a double blind study is unethical, and double blind studies is the bar for establishing causation in the medical community. We cannot give one person randomly worse air to breath, and even if it were experimentally feasible it would be ethically impossible because there is strong suspicion we would be harming the subjects.

Let’s discuss the actual data. The dose dependent result that was found is an indicator of a strong relationship. There is a clear potential mechanism of action (Air -> Lungs -> Bloodstream -> Brain). This isn’t a controversial result in the literature, it’s more evidence for what we already know —- air pollution is very bad.

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