ArticleScientific reports2019
Effects of short-term exposure to particulate matter air pollution on cognitive performance.
Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Association between air pollution exposure and brain cortical thickness throughout the lifespan: A systematic review.Neuroscience · 2024Pooled it
- Lifetime air pollution exposure, cognitive deficits, and brain imaging outcomes: A systematic review.Neurotoxicology · 2023Pooled it
- Airway and systemic biomarkers of health effects after short-term exposure to indoor ultrafine particles from cooking and candles - A randomized controlled double-blind crossover study among mild asthmatic subjects.Particle and fibre toxicology · 2023Trial
- Randomized Cross-Over Study of In-Vehicle Cabin Air Filtration, Air Pollution Exposure, and Acute Changes to Heart Rate Variability, Saliva Cortisol, and Cognitive Function.Environmental science & technology · 2023Trial
- Daily Exceedance of World Health Organization Air Pollutant Guidelines and Cognitive Aging.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Daily relationship between air pollution and physical activity in an industrial region.Applied psychology. Health and well-being · 2026Article
- From Air to Brain: Environmental Nanoparticles as Modifiable Risk Factors for Neurodevelopmental, Neurodegenerative, and Mental Disorders.ACS omega · 2026Review
- Unveiling population heterogeneity in health risks posed by environmental hazards using regression-guided neural network.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Reframing air pollution as a cognitive and socioeconomic risk.NPJ clean air · 2026Review
- PM2.5 Pollution Decrease in Paris, France, for the 2013-2024 Period: An Evaluation of the Local Source Contributions by Subtracting the Effect of Wind Speed.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Running on Fumes: An Analysis of Fine Particulate Matter's Impact on Finish Times in Nine Major US Marathons, 2003-2019.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2025Article
- Air Pollution-Induced Neurotoxicity: The Relationship Between Air Pollution, Epigenetic Changes, and Neurological Disorders.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Acute particulate matter exposure diminishes executive cognitive functioning after four hours regardless of inhalation pathway.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Using low-cost sensors to assess common air pollution sources across multiple residences.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Midlife and late-life environmental exposures on dementia risk in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study: The modifying effects of ApoE.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2024Article
- Influence of meteorological conditions on the variability of indoor and outdoor particulate matter concentrations in a selected Polish health resort.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- HIPTox-Hazard Identification Platform to Assess the Health Impacts from Indoor and Outdoor Air Pollutant Exposures, through Mechanistic Toxicology: A Single-Centre Double-Blind Human Exposure Trial Protocol.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Particulate Matter Induces Oxidative Stress and Ferroptosis in Human Lung Epithelial Cells.Toxics · 2024Article
- Article
- The impact of air pollution on neurocognitive development: Adverse effects and health disparities.Developmental psychobiology · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This paper assesses the effect of short-term exposure to particulate matter (PM) air pollution on human cognitive performance via a double cross over experimental design. Two distinct experiments were performed, both of which exposed subjects to low and high concentrations of PM. Firstly, subjects completed a series of cognitive tests after being exposed to low ambient indoor PM concentrations and elevated PM concentrations generated via candle burning, which is a well-known source of PM. Secondly, a different cohort underwent cognitive tests after being exposed to low ambient indoor PM concentrations and elevated ambient outdoor PM concentrations via commuting on or next to roads. Three tests were used to assess cognitive performance: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Stroop Color and Word test, and Ruff 2 & 7 test. The results from the MMSE test showed a statistically robust decline in cognitive function after exposure to both the candle burning and outdoor commuting compared to ambient indoor conditions. The similarity in the results between the two experiments suggests that PM exposure is the cause of the short-term cognitive decline observed in both. The outdoor commuting experiment also showed a statistically significant short-term cognitive decline in automatic detection speed from the Ruff 2 and 7 selective attention test. The other cognitive tests, for both the candle and commuting experiments, showed no statistically significant difference between the high and low PM exposure conditions. The findings from this study are potentially far reaching; they suggest that elevated PM pollution levels significantly affect short term cognition. This implies average human cognitive ability will vary from city to city and country to country as a function of PM air pollution exposure.
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