In one group of mice, the brains were examined 24 hours after the final pollution exposure. In all of those mice, inflammation was rampant throughout the brain, and the lateral ventricles —chambers on each side of the brain that contain cerebrospinal fluid —were enlarged two to three times their normal size.
“When we looked closely at the ventricles, we could see that the white matter that normally surrounds them hadn’t fully developed,” said Cory-Slechta.
“It appears that inflammation had damaged those brain cells and prevented that region of the brain from developing, and the ventricles simply expanded to fill the space.”
The problems were also observed in a second group of mice 40 days after exposure and in another group 270 days after exposure, indicating that the damage to the brain was permanent.
Brains of mice in all three groups also had elevated levels of glutamate, a neurotransmitter, which is also seen in humans with autism and schizophrenia.
Most air pollution is made up mainly of carbon particles that are produced when fuel is burned by power plants, factories, and cars. For decades, research on the health effects of air pollution has focused on the part of the body where its effects are most obvious —the lungs.
That research began to show that different-sized particles produce different effects. Larger particles, the ones regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are actually the least harmful because they are coughed up and expelled.
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