Air pollution has long been associated with lung disease, but research conducted by the National Taiwan University’s (NTU) College of Public Health showed it might also increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Between 2007 and 2011, researchers studied 249 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, 125 patients with vascular dementia and 497 people in a healthy control group. The majority of the participants were aged between 74 and 76.
The researchers analyzed statistics on particulate matter smaller than 10 micrometers (PM10) in the past 14 years and ozone in the past 12 years from the Environmental Protection Administration’s 24 air quality monitoring stations in the Greater Taipei area and Keelung.
“We discovered that elderly people who had been exposed to PM10 at a level of 49.23 micrograms per cubic meter or higher were four times more prone to developing Alzheimer’s than those exposed to lower levels of the particles,” the research paper’s first author Wu Yun-chun (吳昀麇) told a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
Wu said the risk is directly proportional to the PM10 level a person has been exposed to.
Wu said participants who had long-term exposure to ozone at a density higher than 21.56 parts per billion (ppb) also had double the chance of suffering from Alzheimer’s than their low level-exposed counterparts.
As for vascular dementia, elderly people with exposure to high concentrations of PM10 and ozone are 3.6 times and two times more susceptible to developing the disease respectively, Wu said.
National Taiwan University Hospital neurologist Chen Ta-fu (陳達夫) said the link between exposure to PM10 and increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease could be because PM10 carries certain substances that harm the human body.
“After being inhaled via the nasal cavity, these substances could cause the brain to become chronically inflamed and thus raise the risk of developing Alzheimer’s,” Chen said.
NTU Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine associate professor Karen Chen (程蘊菁) said PM10 density is particularly high near busy main roads and the level of ozone normally peaks at about noon.
“Elderly people are advised to stay indoors and keep their windows shut around noon and rush hours,” Chen said.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS