Dense cities are fast becoming the tube for scientists studying the effects of traffic fumes on the brain.
As the highway choking on traffic, the researchers suspect that exhaust exhaust from cars and trucks-particularly small carbon particles have been implicated in heart disease, cancer and respiratory diseases may also injure the brain cells and synapses key to learning and memory.
New study of public health and laboratory experiments suggest that, at every stage of life, the proper toll traffic fumes is measured on a mental capacity, intelligence and emotional stability. "There are more and more scientists are trying to find whether and why the traffic exhaust exposure can damage the human brain," said medical epidemiologist Jiu-Chiuan Chen at the University of Southern California which analyze the effect of traffic pollution on the health of women in 22 7,500 brain State. "Human Data is very new."
So far, the evidence is largely circumstantial but alarmingly, researchers say. And no one is sure yet of consequences for brain biology or behavior. "There is real cause for concern," said neurochemist Annette Kirshner at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. "But we must proceed with caution."
To be sure, cars and trucks today produces one-tenth the pollution vehicles in 1970. However, more people are on the road and they are stuck in traffic more often. Drivers traveling 10-worst U.S. traffic corridor every year spend an average of 140 hours, or about the time spent at the Office within a month, parked cars in traffic, a new analysis report.