Babies exposed to higher levels of neurotoxin more likely to have difficulty controlling impulses later, research shows
Exposure to common air pollution may cause childhood obesity because it affects children’s ability to control impulse, new first-of-its-kind peer-reviewed research finds.
Particular matter 2.5 (PM2.5) is a neurotoxin that has been linked to obesity, and Mt Sinai researchers say they have for the first time identified impulse control as a potential pathway. The study found that babies exposed to higher levels of PM2.5 during their first year of life were more likely to develop difficulties with controlling impulses later in childhood.
Those behavioral changes were then linked to higher body fat and higher BMI in children between four to eight years old.
I was interested, so I looked into it.
Probably the biggest reason is that it is easy to measure the density of particles of various sizes continuously, but measuring what those particles are made up of is much harder. But while more or less of a particular compound might be more or less harmful, at an epidemiological level, effects seem to be mostly the same as long as particle density is the same. And also, it is hypothesized that any compound that small might have some amount of effect on health as it is small enough to enter the bloodstream through the lungs and trigger an inflammatory immune response.