Feel It In the Air

   "There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear."   Back then those lyrics were about Chicago, but the overall picture was about something so large that we couldn't see it, something so devastating that it was killing us, something that we all knew about but didn't want to believe it existed (the Vietnam war).  And after writing about Alzheimer's and dementia the other day, I came across something as disturbing as those above words from Stephen Stills; something is indeed in the air and it's filling our lungs and accumulating in our brains...and it may just be leading to Alzheimer's.

    In a study released a week ago from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and reported by The Guardian, it was announced that magnetite nano-particles were found in the brains of a small group study of people from various parts of the world and of varying ages.  “You are talking about millions of magnetite particles per gram of freeze-dried brain tissue - it is extraordinary,” said Maher (Proffessor Barbara Maher of Lancaster University who led the research).  “Magnetite in the brain is not something you want to have because it is particularly toxic there,” she said, explaining that the substance can create reactive oxygen species called free radicals.  “Oxidative cell damage is one of the hallmark features of Alzheimer’s disease, and this is why the presence of magnetite is so potentially significant, because it is so bioreactive.”...Abnormal accumulation of brain metals is a key feature of Alzheimer’s disease and a recent study showed that magnetite was directly associated with the damage seen in Alzheimer’s brains. Magnetite particles are known to form biologically in human brains, but these are small and crystal-shaped, unlike the larger, spherical particles that dominated the samples in the new study...“Many of the magnetite particles we have found in the brain are very distinctive,” said Maher.  “They are very rounded nanospheres, because they were formed as molten droplets of material from combustion sources, such as car exhausts, industrial processes and power stations, anywhere you are burning fuel.  They are abundant,” she said.  “For every one of [the crystal shaped particles] we saw about 100 of the pollution particles.  The thing about magnetite is it is everywhere.”  Other studies from the National Institutes of Health as well as others conducted in Taiwan and Mexico appear to show a similar connection to reduced cognitive ability caused by air pollution.
 
     We all remember nano particles;  these tiny (100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair and able to cross the blood-brain barrier) are everywhere, from our toothpastes to our chewing gums and the unregulated world of cosmetics.  But now add in air pollution and you've suddenly got these floating invisibly in our air.  In the case of the city of Lancaster, England (where the new study was released) the measurement of magnetite particles was 200 parts per cubic centimeter.  In the U.S., the federal government's Environmental Protection Agency (now facing severe budget cuts from Congress) feels that particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter should be limited to less than 35 ppm (parts per million per cubic centimeter) over 24 hours. But from another perspective (this from the European Environment Agency), pollution levels are dropping (the graph is adjustable to different pollutants found in the air).  So who's right?  Likely the new discoveries are simply showing just where these particles may have also landed...from what was once thought to be something similar to smoke that dissipated in the air or settled back onto the ground, air pollution found in the new findings might prove worrisome as they accumulate in our chemically-balanced brains.

    Let's take where I currently reside in the state of Utah.  Hitting the second driest summer in recorded history, the effect has been to add to the drying of the great Salt Lake nearby, now nearly 48% smaller in volume than in previous years.  The result has been a dry lakebed now five times larger than the dry lakebed of Owens Valley, that famous water-diversion site that became the theme of the movie Chinatown* (back in 2010 The Guardian named it "the greatest film ever made.").  The dust and pollutants left from the mining industry (which dumped its runoff into the lake) led to a settlement from the city of Los Angeles almost a century later (the city now adds water back into the lake each year to control the dust, enough water to supply a city the size of San Francisco and at a cost of $1.3 billion, a tough solution when California is undergoing a drought).  So what does this have to do with Salt Lake City?  Remember that 35 ppm figure?  Often the dry lakebed produces dust storms that add to a rising level of air pollution which can then add even more to the existing 50 ppm in winter that comes from auto and smelter emissions.  In an article by Energy & Enviroment Publishing, it was reported: ...research suggests the Great Salt Lake isn't even emitting that much dust yet.  That may change the longer the lake's crusts dry out, causing the wind to blow dust that --like dust from California's Salton Sea-- could carry heavy metals and other toxins dumped by mines and smelters.  "If it dries out for years, it could become a different surface and much more prone to dust," said Erik Crosman, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah.  "It could be a disaster if that ends up happening."  The area also regularly exceeds federal limits for ozone, and a shriveling Great Salt Lake may exacerbate that problem.  Crosman described the lake as a "toxic fish bowl" for bad air quality.

    The local City Weekly has reported on possible further water diversions to the lake both by development and by industry (the new NSA facility nearby used over 6.6 million gallons of fresh water last month alone, and now Facebook is also being enticed --Facebook, in other locations, has used 3 to 5 times that amount of water for its servers)...on the rhetorical side, one writer (writer/realtor Babs Delay) questioned why Facebook, with all of our social media stats and photos, wants to build right next door to that facility?  Studies are now going on as to what exactly is in that airborne dust from the once-great Salt Lake, but at least two --lead and arsenic, both not the best toxic chemicals to put into your body or brain-- are suspected to be resting in copious amounts due to extensive mining runoffs.

    The issue brings up a bit more than rising ocean waters if our climate is indeed producing droughts and other changes.  One thing that is changing is the number of people on our planet, people who need water and food.  And as more water is used, more lakes will diminish, and more pockets of oil will dissipate as we fuel and drive our cars.  But if the pollution readings are correct, we may be limiting our growth in ways we can't see, in nano-pollution.  And if that invisible pollution is indeed entering and altering our brain's chemistry, we may still discover that all of this led back to only one species to blame...ourselves.


*According to Wikipedia, film maker Thom Andersen cited the movie Chinatown as primarily fiction and corrects both the timeline and characters in his own award-winning documentary about the history of Los Angeles.