Hazed and Confused: The Effect of Air Pollution on Dementia

Abstract

Tech and Yale. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Road proximity, air pollution, noise, green space and neurologic disease incidence: a population-based cohort study

“…Our results with respect to associations between air pollution (from LUR models), NAD, PD, and AD were consistent with several previous studies. Large-scale multi-city studies in the United States found that for every 1 μg/m 3 increase in annual PM 2.5 , risk of NAD and PD increased by 1.3 to 8% [77,78], compared to our estimate of a 9% increase per an interquartile range increase in PM 2.5 of 1.5 μg/m 3 . A matched case-control study in Denmark found 9% risk increase in PD for one interquartile range increase (2.97 μg/m 3 ) in NO 2 [79], somewhat smaller than our estimate of a 12% increase for an interquartile range increase in NO 2 of ppb (~17 µg/m 3 ).…”

Air pollution and brain health

“…[5] Studies in the US and UK have focused on a dementia outcome derived from electronic health records, in Medicare and the Clinical Practice Research Database (CPRD). [8,9] The large scale Medicare study included 6.9 million older adults who were followed up for 55.4 million personyears of whom 23% were recorded as having developed dementia at some stage; this required the recording of dementia using an insurance claim code. [8] Investigators obtained ZIP+4 codes from Social Security records, corresponding to a single mail delivery segment (but not unique address) for the follow up period.…”

“…[8,9] The large scale Medicare study included 6.9 million older adults who were followed up for 55.4 million personyears of whom 23% were recorded as having developed dementia at some stage; this required the recording of dementia using an insurance claim code. [8] Investigators obtained ZIP+4 codes from Social Security records, corresponding to a single mail delivery segment (but not unique address) for the follow up period. The latitude and longitude of the centroid of each ZIP+4 code was derived and the square of the inverse distance to each air pollution monitor was used to calculate a weighted average of PM2.5 exposure for each location.…”

“…[1] A number of researchers, notably Dr Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas, have focused on this area for many years, [2] but the volume of literature has recently been rapidly expanding. So far in 2018 there have been four review articles[3-6] published and another nine scientific articles [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] which were published too recently for inclusion in those review articles.…”

Understanding the industrial contribution to pollution offers opportunities to further improve air quality in the United States

“…This damage function is an often monetized representation of the impacts the economy can suffer from changes in environmental conditions. In the case of air pollution, impacts take the form of increased mortality and morbidity (11)(12)(13), losses of work hours and reduced productivity (14), losses in human capital (15,16) and social capital (17), and decreased recreational value (18), among others. The main advantage of working with IAMs is the possibility they offer to researchers and policy makers to visualize the current state of the economy and test alternative environmental policies or scenarios.…”