This is not a scoop: Air pollution, especially from road traffic, is harmful to health. It affects the lungs, of course, as well as the cardiovascular system. But what’s less well known is that it also damages the brain. A study of a very large number of French people confirmed that air pollutants have a negative effect on cognitive performance, which was reported in this other research linking pollution with the risk of dementia.

It was the Constance Group that provided Bénédicte Jacquemin and her team Inserm with data on more than 61,000 people aged 45 and over. Epidemiologists took into account participants’ cognitive test results and their exposure, depending on where they lived, to three pollutants associated with road traffic (fine particles less than 2.5 microns – PM2.5, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, carbon soot). They calculated that the result of cognitive performance…