Max: Air pollution makes older men think and speak less clearly

Air pollution is causing older men to think and speak less clearly, according to researchers at Columbia University, and even a short-term rise in airborne particles can harm brain health.

In a study of nearly 1,000 white men with an average age of 69 years, scientists found that mental performance decreased after the rise in air pollution a month before the test. This happened even when peak levels of air pollution were below the safety thresholds set by the World Health Organization.

Test scores from 954 men living in Boston were compared to local levels of PM2.5s, airborne particles less than 2.5 μm in diameter. The tests included tasks to assess word memory, number retrieval, and verbal fluency.

The results, published in Nature Aging, showed that the decline in test scores was associated with higher levels of PM2.5s in the four weeks before participants were assessed even when PM2.5s concentrations remained below 10 micrograms per cubic meter, according to WHO guidelines. The level is routinely breached in London and many other cities.

However, test results have been shown to be less affected if men take aspirin or another non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, known as NSAIDs.

"Our study suggests that short-term exposure to air pollution may be related to short-term changes in cognitive function and that NSAIDs may modulate this link," said Xu Zhao, of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and author of the paper.

Previous studies indicated that painkillers may help reduce inflammation caused by air pollution particles entering the brain.

"The results really confirm the impact of air pollution on human health," Dr. Joan Ryan, Head of Research in Biological Neuropsychiatry and Dementia at Monash University in Melbourne, told the Guardian.

“The significance of this study is that the results are in line with a possible causal link of air pollution to brain function, and indicate that it is not just a matter of very high levels of pollution for long periods. The study found that even relatively low levels, air pollution can negatively affect cognitive function. And perhaps over short periods of time. "

Just two months ago, South Carolina residents were spending hours at their computers searching Facebook groups looking for clients for their COVID-19 vaccine doses and insanely updating their web browsers to record snapshots of the elusive elixir wherever they found them.

Any increase in the weekly allocation of doses, however small, was cause for celebration when demand for shots exceeded supply.

This is not the case anymore.

In just a few weeks, South Carolina has gone from being hungry for a vaccine to getting much more doses than it needs. The shift did not happen because of the abundance of shots now - despite the increased supply - but because demand has slowed significantly.

Vaccine providers administered the first vaccinations to nearly 8,000 residents per day during the past week, according to data from the state's Department of Health and Environmental Control. This is about a third of the number of strokes they were taking in early April, soon after everyone 16 years of age or older became eligible for the vaccine.

Hundreds of vaccine slots are now vacant - appointments are no longer required in many cases - and DHEC is only asking the Feds for a fraction of the doses allotted to South Carolina.

A spokeswoman said this week the agency requested about 47,000 doses of just the 141,000 first doses it could receive.

"Remember the early days when people talked about (how) they drove an hour or two to get to somewhere to get that precious appointment and get vaccinated?" Jane Kelly, an assistant state epidemiologist, said Friday. "We may now be entering an era in which people are not willing or unable to do something exciting like that, so we need to offer people a vaccine."