MAGNETIC PARTICLES IN POLLUTION MAY AFFECT THE BRAIN
Image: van.physics.illinois.edu
Toxic nanoparticles from air pollution have been found embedded in people’s brain tissue… and it has a small study from Lancaster University in the UK has tentatively linked these particles to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The particles were already known to be present in our brains, but researchers had assumed our bodies naturally produced them.
The research team examined brain tissue from 37 people in Manchester, England, and Mexico City, aged between 3 years old and 92. What they found was that each of them contained particles of magnetite, a type of iron oxide. When the team looked at the particles in the front regions of the brains of six of the volunteers, they found two types of magnetite in the tissue - round particles of magnetite and angular magnetite crystals, and the round ones outnumbered the crystals by about 100 to one. Crystal forms are more likely to have a natural source, such as iron that has come out of the body’s cells but round particles normally come from melting iron at high temperatures.
Although the evidence is circumstantial, and the only way to really prove that these particles are sourced from air pollution is to actually trace them all the way from the atmosphere to the brain tissue the team also found traces of metals such as platinum which are very rarely found naturally in the body, but are found in many car engines.
The research has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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