High levels of city pollution linked to brain damage in children

November, 2011
  • A small Mexican study provides more evidence for the negative effect of pollution on developing brains, with cognitive impairment linked to reduced white matter in specific regions.

In yet another study of the effects of pollution on growing brains, it has been found that children who grew up in Mexico City (known for its very high pollution levels) performed significantly worse on cognitive tests than those from Polotitlán, a city with a strong air quality rating.

The study involved 30 children aged 7 or 8, of whom 20 came from Mexico City, and 10 from Polotitlán. Those ten served as controls to the Mexico City group, of whom 10 had white matter hyperintensities in their brains, and 10 had not. Regardless of the presence of lesions, MC children were found to have significantly smaller white matter volumes in right parietal and bilateral temporal regions. Such reduced volumes were correlated with poorer performance on a variety of cognitive tests, especially those relating to attention, working memory, and learning.

It’s suggested that exposure to air pollution disturbs normal brain development, resulting in cognitive deficits.

Reference: 

Related News

Manganese exposure in the workplace is known to have neurotoxic effects, but manganese occurs naturally in soil and sometimes in groundwater. One region where the groundwater contains naturally high levels of manganese is Quebec.

Many survivors of childhood cancer experience cognitive problems as a result of their treatment. The drug methylphenidate (marketed under several names, the best known of which is Ritalin) has previously been shown to help attention problems in such survivors in the short term.

Analysis of DNA and lifestyle data from a representative group of 2,500 U.S.

Five years ago I reported on a finding that primary school children exposed to loud aircraft noise showed impaired reading comprehension (see below).

Children’s ability to remember past events improves as they get older. This has been thought by many to be due to the slow development of the

A study following over 300 Mexican-American children living in an agricultural community has found that their prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides (measured by metabolites in the mother’s urine during pregnancy) was significantly associated with attention problems at age 5.

Last year I reported on a study involving 210 subjects aged 7 to 31 that found that in contrast to the adult brain, most of the tightest connections in a child's brain are between brain regions that are physically close to each other.

Two independent studies have found that students whose birthdays fell just before their school's age enrollment cutoff date—making them among the youngest in their class—had a substantially higher rate of ADHD diagnoses than students who were born later.

A study involving 117 six year old children and 104 eight year old children has found that the ability to preserve information in

Findings that children are less likely than adults to distort memories when negative emotions are evoked has significant implications for the criminal justice system.

Pages

Subscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest health newsSubscribe to Latest news
Error | About memory

Error

The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later.