Affiliations: [a] Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine, Program in Public Health, Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, USA
| [b] Department of Neurology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| [c] Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| [d] World Trade Center Health and Wellness Program, Department of Medicine, Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, USA
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Sean Clouston, PhD, Program in Public Health and Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine, Health Sciences Center, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, 11794-8338, USA. Tel.: +1 631 444 6593; E-mail: sean.clouston@stonybrookmedicine.edu.
Abstract: An estimated 92% of the world’s population live in regions where people are regularly exposed to high levels of anthropogenic air pollution. Historically, research on the effects of air pollution have focused extensively on cardiovascular and pulmonary health. However, emerging evidence from animal and human studies has suggested that chronic exposures to air pollution detrimentally change the functioning of the central nervous system with the result being proteinopathy, neurocognitive impairment, and neurodegenerative disease. Case analyses of aging World Trade Center responders suggests that a single severe exposure may also induce a neuropathologic response. The goal of this report was to explore the neuroscientific support for the hypothesis that inhaled particulate matter might cause an Alzheimer’s-like neurodegenerative disease, in order to consider proposed mechanisms and latency periods linking inhaled particulate matter and neurodegeneration, and to propose new directions in this line of research.
Keywords: Cognitive impairment, dementia, exposures, inhalations, neurodegeneration, neuroinflammation, particulate matter, pathways, World Trade
Center
