Air pollution even makes it more difficult to do the weekly shopping

Short-term exposure to particulate pollution also reduces your ability to concentrate, making even the most mundane tasks suddenly a lot more difficult.

Air pollution is a major problem worldwide. Air pollution is a constant concern, especially in urban areas, where concentrations of harmful substances such as particulate matter (PM2.5) are often well above recommended limits. And that doesn't just have consequences for human health. It also clouds your mind, making even the simplest daily tasks suddenly challenging, according to a new study.

More about air pollution
Air pollution is the largest environmental risk factor for human health worldwide and contributes to premature mortality. The damaging effects of poor air quality on the cardiovascular system are well known, and there is also mounting evidence linking pollution to neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. PM2.5 is the air pollutant that poses the greatest risk to human health, responsible for around 4.2 million deaths in 2015 alone. The World Health Organization recommends that daily and annual air pollution limits remain below 15 μg m-3 and 5 μg m-3 respectively.
Researchers allowed study participants to experience both high levels of air pollution – via candle smoke – and clean air. They then tested their cognitive abilities before and four hours after exposure. The team assessed working memory, selective attention, emotion recognition, psychomotor speed and sustained attention, among other things.
Negative influence
The findings show that air pollution has a strikingly negative impact on our cognitive functions, especially selective attention and emotion recognition. Even brief exposure to high concentrations of PM has been shown to impair a person's ability to concentrate, ignore distractions, and behave socially appropriately. The experts suspect that inflammation due to pollution is responsible for this. “Our study provides compelling evidence that even short-term exposure to particulate pollution can have direct negative effects on brain functions crucial for daily tasks, such as doing the weekly shop,” said co-author Thomas Faherty from the University of Birmingham.

Cognitive functions
Cognitive functions include all kinds of mental processes that are essential for daily life. For example, selective attention plays an important role in decision-making and goal-directed behavior, such as prioritizing items on your shopping list at the supermarket while ignoring other products and avoiding impulse purchases. Social-emotional cognition – the ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others – plays an important role in guiding socially appropriate behavior. And working memory is like a temporary workspace where you hold and edit information, and is essential for tasks that require simultaneous processing and storage, such as planning your calendar or having multiple conversations at the same time. Although these are separate cognitive skills, they work together to enable successful task completion.

Working memory
However, the researchers note that although air pollution did affect selective attention and emotion recognition, working memory was not affected. This suggests that some brain functions are more resistant to short-term exposure to pollution than others.

Reduced productivity
According to the researchers, the findings are quite worrying. “Poor air quality not only hinders intellectual development, but also worker productivity, which has major consequences for society and the economy in a world that revolves around cognitive performance,” said researcher Francis Pope. “Reduced productivity is impacting economic growth, underscoring the urgent need for stricter air quality regulations and public health measures to address the harmful effects of pollution on brain health, especially in highly polluted cities.”

Overall, the study underlines the harmful impact of air pollution on the cognitive functions we need every day. Furthermore, the findings highlight the importance of further research into the ways in which air pollution affects cognitive functions and to explore its long-term effects, especially in vulnerable groups such as children and the elderly. “It is crucial to better understand the effects of air pollution on the brain and to further investigate the impact of different pollution sources on the brain health of vulnerable older people,” concludes co-author Gordon McFiggans.