Clean Air and Cognitive Decline

First the findings to inform you on what the problem is:

In a 11-year epidemiological study that was published in 2017 in Translational Psychiatry, USC (The University of Southern California) researchers reported that living in places with PM2.5 exposures higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) standard of 12 µg/m3 nearly doubled dementia risk in older women. If the finding holds up in the general population, air pollution could account for roughly 21% of dementia cases worldwide, says the study’s senior author, epidemiologist Jiu-Chiuan Chen of the Keck School of Medicine at USC.

Austin Air Purifiers are clinically proven to clean the air of fine particle pollution. Using such a machine in the bedroom during the sleep cycle reduces this risk dramatically.

Some people may be more susceptible than others. 

In the Translational Psychiatry study, Chen’s team found that women carrying the Alzheimer’s risk gene APOE4 faced a disproportionately higher risk from pollution. And recently, Finch has started to examine the overlap—and potential synergy—between PM2.5 and cigarette smoke. The smoke is itself rich in ultrafine particles and can trigger the production of amyloid plaques and neuroinflammation in mouse models. Although smoking was once considered protective against Alzheimer’s, prospective studies have since established tobacco smoke as a major risk factor, he says. In 2014, for example, a report published by the World Health Organization attributed as much as 14% of Alzheimer’s disease worldwide to smoking.

Cigarette smoke, car exhaust, pollution all contain particles that are too fine for many air pollution sensors to accurately measure, says Arian Saffari, who works in a lab led by Constantinos Sioutas at the University of Southern California (USC). Typically smaller than 0.2 µm in diameter, these “ultrafine” particles fall within a broader class of air pollutants commonly referred to as PM2.5 because of their size, 2.5 µm or less. When it comes to toxicity, size matters: the smaller the particles that cells are exposed to, Saffari says, the higher their levels of oxidative stress, marked by the production of chemically reactive molecules such as peroxides, which can damage DNA and other cellular structures.

Using a premium air purifier such as the Austin HealthMate will absorb these fine particles.

Some of the health risks of inhaling fine and ultrafine particles

-are well-established, such as asthma, lung cancer, and, most recently, heart disease. But a growing body of evidence suggests that exposure can also harm the brain, accelerating cognitive aging, and may even increase risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Deepening the concerns, researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada reported in The Lancet that among 6.6 million people in the province of Ontario, those living within 50 meters of a major road—where levels of fine pollutants are often 10 times higher than just 150 meters away—were 12% more likely to develop dementia than people living more than 200 meters away.

In a September 2016 review of 18 epidemiological studies from Taiwan, Sweden, Germany, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, all but one showed an association between high exposure to at least one component of air pollution and a sign of dementia. The review, published in Neurotoxicology, included a 2012 analysis of 19,000 retired U.S. nurses, which found that the more fine particulates the nurses were exposed to, based on monitoring data near their homes, the faster they declined on cognitive tests. For every additional 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air they breathed, their performance on tests of memory and attention declined as if they had aged by 2 years, says Jennifer Weuve, an epidemiologist at Boston University, who led the analysis.

Imaging studies also suggest that pollution attacks the human brain. In a 2015 analysis of brain MRI scans of people enrolled in the Framingham Heart Study, a long-term cardiovascular study in New England, researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston found that the closer people had lived to a major roadway—and thus the more PM2.5 they had likely been exposed to—the smaller their cerebral brain volume. The association held up even after adjusting for factors such as education, smoking, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Is there a solution? Rest easy, of course there’s a solution.

These findings are not new. What is important here is that there is a solution to this problem for seniors – a premium segment, clinically proven air purifier.  There are a lot of air purifiers on the market so many in fact as to be quite confusing.  One could go to the local David Jones or Harvey Norman and see more than a few options.  However, premium segment air purifiers are not sold at these stores. 

Not All Air Purifiers are created equal

What is a premium segment air purifier? Purifiers that use a true medical HEPA filter in concert with other stages of filter media that address serious indoor air quality concerns by removing sub-micron particles, noxious gases, viruses and chemicals from the air we breathe. 

We spend ⅓ of our lives sleeping, properly cleaning the air we breathe at night increases our immune systems ability to recharge, and insultates us from the fine particles that cause cognitive decline. 

Austin Air Purifiers are the trailblazers in clinically proven military grade air purification for the home and office. The HealthMate and HealthMatePlus are the industry leaders in this segment. Revolutionary technology thirty years ago, evolving and continuing to innovate today Austin Air focuses on one thing only – cleaning air. Our machines do help you get a better night sleep handling dust, pollen, dander, mould, mould spores, smoke and VOC’s is the baseline.  Austin Air purifiers remove 99.97% of all particles larger than 0.3 microns and 95% of all particles larger than 0.1 microns. 

Some companies such as Dyson build everything from vacuums and hand dryers to fans. They have them made with plastic and spray paint. They are aesthetically pleasing look like functional artwork.  However, as air purifiers they are mediocre at best.  

We design, build and sweat the details of air purifiers. It is all we do here at Austin. We  care so much about our customers and clean air that we think about the things you don’t.  All our machines are made of 24 gauge steel, not plastic. We have four stages of air filtration, not two. Our filters are robust affairs with a lot of surface area. The cylinder filters inside our machines are designed and machined by us on site in our factory in the US, not China or Singapore. We bake on our paint in an oven,  and then powder coat the finish in order to be sure our machines do not emit VOC’s. To find out more about our revolutionary evolution in building the best air purifiers in the world click this link and find out which category is right for you.