Both short-term and long-term exposure to wildfire smoke and other pollutants like ozone and diesel emissions can cause inflammation in the brain. We believe pollutants in the lungs cause the neurological effects. Previous research has suggested that breathing in particulate matter (PM) causes pulmonary proteolysis, creating fragmented peptides that enter the bloodstream and weaken the blood–brain barrier (BBB).

Climate Central, a non-profit group, says that every person in the US took in more harmful wildfire smoke in 2023 than in any other year since 2006. Studies show that over the last ten years, exposure has grown 27 times in the United States.

Pollutants from wildfire smoke are mixed together, but fine particulate matter (PM2.5) makes up most of it and is a significant health risk. A study of more than 1.2 million people in southern California over the course of ten years found that wildfire smoke raises the chance of dementia more than any other type of air pollution. Researchers indicate that wildfire smoke is more dangerous to brain health than other types of air pollution.

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is air pollution from industry, cars, and wildfire smoke. These are very small drops of solid and liquid matter in the air, 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The chance of getting dementia was much higher when people were exposed to PM2.5 from wildfire smoke than when people were exposed from other sources of air pollution. Smoke from other sources increases the risk of dementia, but not as much as smoke from wildfires.

Mental Health Consequences

On days with a lot of pollution, more people go to the hospital for depression, suicide attempts, and psychotic episodes. Study after study shows that children whose mothers were exposed to high amounts of particulates while they were pregnant are more likely to have motor and cognitive problems as adults.

One study is one of the first to look at the effects of particulate matter on teens, whose brains are still growing.

Data from 10,000 pre-teens in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD), the largest US child health study, was analyzed. Two of the 21 study sites are at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Researchers looked at parent questionnaires from four different times over three years and found that for both boys and girls, each extra day of exposure at unsafe levels increased the chance that they would have depression, anxiety, and other “internalizing symptoms” up to a year later.

But wildfire smoke doesn’t only affect the immediate area. While the exact distance depends on the wind and weather, smoke from wildfires can move hundreds of miles. This wide area has an effect on the air quality in places far from the fire, and the effects can last for weeks.

Smoke from wildfires, as previously noted, can have a significant effect on health. Some of the chemicals and small particles in smoke can impact the eyes, nose, and throat, making it hard to breathe, cough, and wheeze. If someone already has a breathing problem, like asthma, these signs can get worse.

How Can You Protect Yourself

It’s important to remember how the air quality is affected by the flames in the area, even if you are miles away. These are some simple things you can do to stay away from smoke and clean the air in your home and car.

1. Spend as much time as possible inside
Do not go outside as much, especially if you are working out when the air quality is poor. Inside is the best place to be when there is smoke. Keep a close eye on local news on the air quality. They often include a color-coded Air Quality Index (AQI) to help you decide how active you should be.

2. Close all the doors and windows
All of your windows and doors should be closed to keep smoke out of your home. Weather stripping or towels can fill in holes under doors and windows if you can. If your whole-house fan or window air conditioner does not have a HEPA filter, do not use them. They can bring smoke inside.

3. Use an air cleaner
If you have an air cleaner, especially one with a HEPA filter, use it to help clean the air inside your home. You might want to use portable air cleaners in the bedrooms and living rooms where you spend the most time. Do not use things that make ozone because it can make the air quality worse.

4. Create a room with clean air
Set aside one room as a “clean air room” if keeping your whole house smoke-free is hard. A HEPA air filter should be set up in a room with few windows and doors. During times of smoke, spend most of your time in this room.

5. Know how to use your air conditioner well
If you have an air conditioner, make sure it is set to bring in air from outside and move it inside. Keep the windows closed and, your car, set your air conditioner to the recycling mode to keep smoke out of your car while you drive.

6. Stay away from things that make indoor pollution worse
When the air quality outside is a concern, it is important to cut down on indoor pollution sources as well. Do not use gas stoves, burn candles, or smoke inside. The air quality inside can get even worse, and these actions can make the environment more dangerous.

7. Put on a mask if you need to.
If you have to go outside, wear a mask to keep out small particles. Wearing N95 respirators or KN95 masks can help protect you from dangerous particles in wildfire smoke. Scarves or masks made of cloth will not keep smoke out.

8. Keep an eye on air quality
You can check the air quality in your area in real time with apps or websites. There is a simple way to tell if the air is safe to breathe with the Air Quality Index (AQI), which helps you plan your day.

9. Drink plenty of water and look after your health
It is important to stay hydrated because wildfire smoke can irritate your lungs and make it harder to breathe. Your lungs and sinuses stay moist when you drink plenty of water. For people who already have conditions like asthma, make sure they have all of their medicines on hand. Also, do not wait to call their doctor if they have trouble breathing or other signs.

We are beginning to suffer through the effects of climate change and wildfires are a result. Living with these conflagrations may mean changes over a long period of time because climate change will be with us for decades, if not longer. Lifestyle changes are mandated if we expect to maintain our health when we need to interact with wildfire-induced pollution.

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The statistics lay bare recycling’s inability to stem the tide of plastics clogging our ecosystems. Of the staggering 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic the world has produced since its debut in the 1950s, a minuscule 9% has been recycled. The remaining 91% ends up charring the landscape of landfills, fouling our forests and polluting our priceless oceans — a vile legacy we are bequeathing to future generations.

And who, you might ask, is primarily responsible for this ecologically criminal status quo? The very companies that fear-mongered decades ago about a mythical recycling solution even as they carpet-bombed the world with cheap, disposable plastic packaging destined to become noxious, virtually immortal refuse.

This sordid tale of corporate deception dates back to the 1970s. As public outcry grew over the scourge of visible plastic pollution, shadowy alliances of petrochemical profiteers like Big Oil and plastics manufacturers joined forces with consumer product giants like Coca-Cola. Rather than explore sustainable alternatives, they initiated an insidious public relations blitz to divert responsibility.

The concept of recycling was central to this greenwashing campaign. Coca-Cola began funding some of the earliest municipal recycling facilities in New York City. The plastics lobby created front groups with benign-sounding names like the “Council for Solid Waste Solutions” to proselytise the fake gospel of recycling as a societal panacea. They promised Americans that we could recycle 25% of our plastic bottle waste by 1995 just by following their lead.

Meanwhile, these same corporations were executing a silent coup as cash-strapped cities and towns rushed to spend millions on exorbitant blue bin programs and processing equipment. They rapidly phased out older, reusable and refillable packaging formats with sturdy glass bottles that had achieved a robust, sustainable 96% return rate nationwide. By the late 1970s, refillable container return rates were bled down to an anaemic 5% as disposable plastic became ubiquitous.

Laws and public policies aimed at mitigating the plastics crisis were systematically stymied through lobbying might. When New York State proposed a pioneering tax on disposable bottles in 1971, industry pressure killed the plan. When Congress debated a legislative ban on all non-returnable containers in 1973, the plastics lobby began to bury it. Even unilateral bans enacted by states, like Hawaii’s 1977 restriction on plastic bottles, were swiftly torpedoed after industry backlash.

Fast forward a half-century, and the plastic peddlers and their multi-national corporate enablers show zero signs of relenting in their recycling confidence game. Last year, ExxonMobil fought to defeat a proposed plastic pollution fee in Maine. The oil colossus remains a top funder of lobbying juggernauts like the American Chemistry Council and the deceptively branded Alliance to End Plastic Waste — groups fervently protecting the status quo at all costs.

The hard truth is that even under utterly optimal conditions, recycling has severe limitations in resolving the plastic crisis. Due to thermal realities, most of what we put in those blue bins isn’t recycled. And the recycling process itself is highly energy-intensive, burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases while yielding plastic of degraded quality.

Serious historians will look back on pro-recycling propaganda as one of the most egregious cases of mass greenwashing the world has ever witnessed. Armed with bottomless profits and mercenary lobbyists, plastic pushers hid behind a shibboleth of Environmental Responsibility to protect their cash cows. They diverted the public’s attention from their pollution nightmare while making taxpayers shoulder the crushing costs.

Society truly needs a revolutionary new approach to sustainable packaging — one centred on reducing overall plastics production, aggressively transitioning to reusable material formats, mandating corporate responsibility for the full lifecycle impacts of disposables, and universally banning unnecessary single-use packaging.

The plastics crisis was a corporate-made catastrophe borne of unchecked greed and willful deception. They can never recycle their way out of this gargantuan mess of their own making. Our planet’s ecological survival hinges on dismantling the recycling myth and apportioning accountability to the calloUs captains of these industries who betrayed the Earth in pursuit of profit.

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If you guessed air pollution, you are spot on. After smoking, air pollution is the second leading cause of lung cancer worldwide. That’s the finding of a new analysis.

Today we look at new data showing variability in lung cancer incidence by geography. You’ll learn which countries are the most affected, how coal affects risk, and how those of us who care about those with cancer can use our voices to fight back.

“So, whether the aliens explore with chemistry or with radio waves, they might come to the same conclusion: a planet where there’s advanced technology must be populated with intelligent life-forms, who may occupy themselves discovering how the universe works and how to apply its laws for personal or public gain.

Looking more closely at Earth’s atmospheric fingerprints, human biomarkers will also include sulfuric, carbonic, nitric acids, and other components of smog from burning fossil fuels. Suppose the curious aliens are socially, culturally, and technologically more advanced than we are. In that case, they will surely interpret these biomarkers as convincing evidence for the absence of intelligent life on Earth.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Lung cancer problem scope

Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains that skin cancer is the most common cancer type in the USA, followed by prostate cancer (among men) and breast cancer (among women).

Lung cancer is the leading cause of death due to cancer in the United States among men and women.

Across the globe, lung cancer is the second most common cancer. By sex, it is the leading cancer in men and the second most common cancer in women.

There are more than 2.2 million new lung cancer cases each year. Here are the countries with the highest incidences of lung cancer, according to the World Cancer Research Fund International (cases per 100,000):

1. Hungary 50
2. Serbia 47
3. France, New Caledonia 43
4. French Polynesia 41
5. Turkey 40
6. Montenegro 40
7. Belgium 38
8. Bosnia and Herzogovenia 38
9. North Korea 37
10. Denmark 37

The death rates are highest in Hungary, Serbia, French Polynesia, Turkey, and Guam.

Lung cancer causes

Smoking is the main cause of the two main forms of lung cancer: small and non-small cell. Cigarettes contribute to 80 percent of lung cancer deaths in women, and 90 percent of men, respectively.

Men who smoke are 23 times more likely to get lung cancer than non-smokers. Women are 13 times more likely, compared with never smokers.

Smoking can affect those of us who are non-smokers. In the United States, exposure to secondhand smoke is related to about 7,330 lung cancer deaths among non-smokers yearly. Non-smokers have a 1.2 to 1.3-fold risk of developing lung cancer if exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work.

Other lung cancer causes

Besides smoking and the factors detailed above, other proven causes of lung cancer include:

• Previous lung disease (such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, emphysema, or chronic bronchitis).
• Having antibodies to Chlamydia pneumoniae, bacteria that can cause chest infections.
• Exposure (such as at work) to asbestos, radon, crystalline silica, mixtures of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and heavy metals are linked with an increased risk of lung cancer. Radon exposure is second only to smoking as a causative agent of lung cancer.
• Indoor air pollution (for example, from wood and coal burning for heating and cooking.

If you drink water containing arsenic, your lung cancer risk rises. Among current and former smokers, taking high doses of beta-carotene supplements increases lung cancer risk.

On the other hand, the World Cancer Research Fund International offers some potential risk-reducing strategies:

• Limit red meat, processed meat, and alcoholic drinks, as these substances may increase the risk of lung cancer.
• Increasing your fruit and vegetable intake for current and former smokers may lower your lung cancer risk.
• Foods [not supplements] with beta-carotene, carotenoids, or retinol may drop your lung cancer risk.
• In current users of cigarettes, vitamin C-containing food may lower the risk.
• For never-smokers, foods with isoflavones may drop the risk.
• Physical activity may decrease the risk of lung cancer.

Air pollution and lung cancer

Could pollution be the second leading cause of lung cancer? A novel study suggests that 14.1 percent of lung cancer deaths worldwide are directly linked to air pollution.

This new finding puts air pollution as the second leading cause of lung cancer, exceeded only by smoking.

The researchers report that the lung cancer death burden attributable to air pollution is lower in the USA, where 4.7 percent of deaths due to the disease are directly linked to pollution.

Unfortunately, we in the western USA have seen a recent increase in wildfires and can expect to pay the price for our exposure to this unpleasant air. The study authors also found an association between deaths from lung cancer worldwide and the proportion of national energy produced by coal.

The post The Second Leading Cause of Lung Cancer Will Surprise You appeared first on Medika Life.

The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can’t breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution. — Joe Biden

Alzheimer’s disease isn’t a disease of old age; it begins in infancy, possibly even before birth, because of pollution. Pollution, therefore, initiates the death spiral even before children can walk and talk. 

Babies’ fates are sealed by the pollution created in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the pollutants in the food we eat as well as the oceans in which we swim. 

Not a fancy of fanatical environmental groups, the facts are coming in daily with ever-increasing disturbing research making a strong case for pollution as the ultimate brain destroyer. 

In the Beginning

Somewhere in the Eastern or Western hemispheres, a baby is born. A gift from God, the people, may say, but the child is already damaged by the greed, carelessness, and behavior that had betrayed this infant’s trust before it even knew trust existed. 

Detailing how this child has been damaged before birth, after birth, and into its childhood and adult years is a torturous route. The journey reveals a total disregard for this planet, its oceans, its air, and every living creature on it. Is that why we want to go to other planets and explore the stars? 

We’ve worked diligently to ruin Earth, and it is going to be an incredibly difficult, dangerous, and expensive repair. Uppermost in this chain of events that must take place to return health to the planet is our behavior and our business models. 

Both go hand-in-hand and contribute to this early beginning demise of an infant’s brain.

Urban planners, too, have played their role in this dire drama of destruction. For example, once the most powerful man in New York State, Robert Moses, believed that highways were the city’s future and that of Long Island. Accordingly, he began to destroy neighborhoods and build highways through the city and out to Long Island. 

In a minor effort at goodwill for children, Moses created something in addition to highways; playgrounds. Where were the playgrounds placed? All of them were along the highways that Moses was building. When air pollution was of no concern to him or most others, the children in those playgrounds inhaled deeply. 

The kids took in the lead and all of the damaging byproducts of automobile emissions. They didn’t have to eat lead paint, they inhaled lead and the residual microgarbage from car tires.

Lead is one of the most invasive substances to burrow its way into the brain, where it stays forever, causing developmental damage. These children would carry this “gift” from Moses with them for the rest of their lives.

Moses’ plans were cut short by an urban activist, Jane Jacobs, who saw how the city plans were damaging. Readers can catch a glimpse of the battle for New York City here and a documentary here.

A Climate Change Pioneer Ignored

One hundred-sixty-four years ago, when no one thought about the environment or the new science of ecology and climate change wasn’t a word in any books, one woman stands out. Eunice Foote published a paper in 1856 on the heat-trapping effects of CO2. Climate change science and the greenhouse effect were born.

Foote’s paper was left to languish (on p. 382) in the back of a prestigious journal, The American Journal of Science and Arts, and basically ignored. A scientist, feminist, and pioneer in climate change science, she would write long before “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. A brief animation of the effects of climate change can be viewed here. 

Now that we’ve waited for so many years to notice how the climate is warming, we have to face that infant’s realities and how this all came to be.

The Word Is Plastics

The scene from “The Graduate” comes to mind whenever I hear this word. However, the miracle product, plastics, for consumers and manufacturers has become the bane of our existence. Wrapping everything imaginable in plastic and then discarding it became a way of life. Who thought it wouldn’t break down, and we’d be fine? 

Even clothing contains cloths derived from plastic. Natural fibers have been pushed out of the market, and we are encouraged to keep buying more clothing to keep up with the latest fashions. The garbage keeps piling up as a result.

One of my oceanography professors decades ago told us about plastics and The Sargasso Sea. An area rich in seaweed, the “sea,” serves both as a birthing and protective area for sea life, but it has one other main distinction: the North Atlantic garbage patch. But plastics don’t merely float there.

Plastic debris absorbs toxic chemicals, potentially poisoning anything that eats it. Microbes that eat plastics may not be the solution for which we prayed. This is because “…it’s unclear whether this enzyme or similar enzymes, are safe to use in widespread environmental remediation.” 

But that’s only part of the equation leading us to that baby that greeted the world with its first cry. The real danger, which may be worse than what we can see, is the unseen plastic; microplastic is found in our food and the air we breathe.

The Seen and Unseen Plastic Menace

As the bits of plastic degrade into smaller and smaller bits of microplastic (MP), the danger to that just-born child increases. 

MP are of special concern since their bioaccumulation potential increases with decreasing size. MP may be ingested by various organisms ranging from plankton and fish to birds and even mammals, and accumulate throughout the aquatic food web. In addition, plastics contain a multitude of chemical additives and adsorb organic contaminants from the surrounding media. Since these compounds can transfer to organisms upon ingestion, MP act as vectors for other organic pollutants and are, therefore, a source of wildlife exposure to these chemicals.

By the year 2025, we are estimated to have dumped over 11 billion tons of plastics in our environment where the winds will take the tiny bits and spread them to urban and wilderness areas. We will have done an excellent job of destroying our living space. 

Worse than that, we will have contributed to the painful disabilities of the world’s infants and children with all forms of pollution. What an accomplishment to put into history books.

Some scientists are now referring to a phenomenon called “plastic rain,” which is spiraling the Earth. The normal earth atmospheric movement, the Coriolus Effect, would indicate “that while urban centers may be the initial source, plastics accumulate in the atmosphere over longer time periods, are transported long distances, and are deposited during favorable conditions such as slower air-mass velocities or intersections with mountain ranges.” Contamination by plastic pollution, therefore, can be found anywhere on Earth. How much pollution is on Mt. Everest?

Of course, we will have continued our staunch attack on our oceans, too. Almost 16 million tons of microplastics are expected to be currently or soon to be embedded in the ocean floor. The total of it all, including in the Mariana Trench, is “up to 35 times more than the estimated weight of plastic pollution on the ocean’s surface.”

Thanks to all for the discarded plastic coffee cups, the shopping bags, food trays, trinkets, toys, and many other “disposable” plastic objects. And let’s not forget the clothing industry with its ever-changing designs to create a constant need to buy new and discard the old. In 2017, it was estimated to generate $2.5 trillion in business. Many garments are made from plastic-derived fabrics.

Childhood, Pollution, and Alzheimer’s

Research with older adults has found a relationship between Alzheimer’s and air pollution. In one study in China, long-term exposure to air pollution showed poor performance on nonverbal and math tests. Obviously, this does not indicate Alzheimer’s since that disease can only be, at this time, established on autopsy. But it points to a form of cognitive decline and dementia other than Alzheimer’s (SDAT).

A second study in England of adults age 50 to 79 with Alzheimer’s and living in greater London found that 39% of those with the highest annual concentration of air pollution in their areas showed the highest degree of dementia; up to 1.4 times the risk of those living in areas with lower pollution concentration. 

Another study in the United States of 998 women showed a greater decline in the learning of words for those exposed to a high concentration of air pollution in the preceding three years. Neuroimaging also indicated atrophy of the brain in areas typically affected by Alzheimer’s.

A study of 19,000 retired nurses found that those exposed over the years to fine particle pollution experienced faster cognitive decline than those who had not been in these polluted areas.

The internal combustion engine exhaust has been established as one source of pollution, augmenting cognitive decline in numerous studies.

However, children get an early start on pollution-related brain damage, as shown by another study in Mexico City. 

Alzheimer’s disease starts in children’s brainstems and has been found in residents of Mexico City as young as 11 months of age. According to this research, “Alzheimer’s disease starting in the brainstem of young children (is) affecting 99.5% of young urbanites in a serious health crisis.”

On autopsy, typical amyloid-beta was found at age 11 months, and in children and teens, there was a noted loss of neuronal density, loss of synapses, and changes to the hippocampus.

We strongly suggest the first two decades of life are critical for brain damage associated to environmental pollutant exposures, and although there is no doubt considerable individual AD progression differences are likely determined by APOE and factors such as gender, metabolism, nutrition, genetics, occupational history and others.

Pollution Impairment and Dementia

As has been shown by studies of pollution, the air we breathe may have an effect on and possible involvement in diseases such as Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. But new research appears to have proven this untrue.

Researchers note a higher incidence of dementia but not Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis related to proximity to major highways. A study in Canada looked at a large cohort of patients who were free of these diseases. 

They did a meta-analysis of a group of 243,611 incident cases of dementia, 31,577 cases of Parkinson’s disease, and 9,247 cases of multiple sclerosis between the years 2001 in 2012. There appeared to be a strong dementia relationship between urban residents who lived in major cities near major traffic roads and who had never moved for a period of years. 

The conclusion of the researchers was that “living close to heavy traffic was associated with a higher incidence of dementia but not with Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis.” 

One pollutant that appears to be evident in many of these studies and it is lead pollution from vehicles. One other problematic pollutant was nitrogen dioxide (NO2), but it is lead that is the greater danger, according to one expert in the field. 

Unlike NO2, lead persists in the human body, with more than 95% of the adult
body burden of lead stored in bones, where it can remain for decades. Stored
lead is mobilised when bone turnover is higher than the normal turnover
rate — ie, in patients with osteoporosis. Consequently, mobilisation of stored
lead coupled with decline of bone mineralisation in elderly Canadian
residents means that their blood lead levels can remain elevated many years
after road-borne lead exposure.Early exposure, therefore, remains with us for a lifetime. 

The evidence regarding children and brain damage, similar to Alzheimer’s related to air pollution, is shocking. If nothing else, it is reasonable to show strong concern for the air we breathe. But pollution may not be confined to lead because plastic rain may also play a role as can the contaminants in the foods we eat. 

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