Exposure to two common air pollutants in childhood may slow a key feature of brain development into adolescence, European researchers have found in a newly released study.
The study, which adds to the growing body of evidence of air pollution’s neurological effects, followed more than 1,300 Dutch youngsters born between early 2002 and 2006.
Based on follow-up brain scans conducted at ages 10 and 14, researchers tied increasing concentrations of airborne nitrogen oxides and particulate matter early on to delayed development of a marker for cerebral “white matter,” which helps different parts of the brain communicate with each other.
“Even if the size of the effects were small, this can have a meaningful impact on a population scale,” Mònica Guxens, a scientist at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, said in a Wednesday news release summarizing the paper’s conclusions.
