This is your brain on air pollution Mara Neira
There is something we desperately need
that we cannot stop doing:
it is breathing.
Do you want to try?
Why don’t we stop breathing together
for, let’s say, even 10 seconds.
Is that OK?
Let’s do it.
Get ready … OK, now!
Oof, difficult, isn’t it?
Well, this is an incredible number
that will again take your breath away:
seven.
Seven what?
Seven million premature deaths a year
caused by exposure to the bad quality
of the air we breathe.
Imagine – it’s like more than
the entire population of my dear Madrid
will be wiped out in one year.
And you may ask:
Has this information been disclosed?
Has this information
been publicized, distributed?
Well, yes.
We have at the moment
more than 70,000 scientific papers
examining the relationship
between air pollution and our health,
and the global media has been
regularly covering this issue.
In fact, in a relatively
short period of time,
we have come to know
that air pollution is having
a negative impact
on almost all our major organs.
Let’s start by the lungs.
When we think about air pollution,
we always think about the lungs.
In fact, every time we take a breath,
we are inhaling toxic pollutants,
and our poor pink and lovely lungs
are suffering all of that.
Over the last 10 years,
we have put together a lot of knowledge
about what’s happened to that,
but let me tell you first
what is air pollution.
OK, air pollution
is a very complex mixture
of solid particles,
liquid droplets
and gaseous chemicals.
Imagine all of this mixture
that might come from sources
like household fuel burning
or industry or traffic
or many other indoor and outdoor sources.
And, of course, different
sources of pollution
will make different
mixtures of pollutants.
The point is that all of these toxins,
they can be combined in different ways.
Let’s take, for instance,
the particulate matter, the PM.
It can be a mixture that will include –
look at the cocktail here –
soil and road dust,
sea salt,
toxic metals,
diesel smog,
nitrates and sulfates,
and all of this toxic poison,
this delicious cocktail,
is going through our lungs every day,
and we are constantly exposed
to this air pollution
because we cannot stop breathing.
I mean, we can do it for 10 seconds,
but no more than that.
We cannot stop breathing
and, in addition,
we need, every day,
around 10,000 liters of air.
So we said that we have
seven million deaths
caused by air pollution every year.
Are we panicking?
Are we keeping calm?
Are we declaring a national disaster,
a global emergency?
Well, no, and in fact I’m asking myself
this question every day:
What is happening?
But here is something that maybe
will force us to react more quickly.
Air pollution is not just
affecting our lungs.
It’s affecting our brain as well.
This is our brain.
Beautiful.
We all have it.
We all need it.
Hopefully, we all use it –
(Laughter)
some more than others.
And in the last 10 years of history,
the research about the relationship
between air pollution
and our brain’s health
has been increased dramatically,
so maybe now our brain
is going up in smoke.
But let me tell you the evidence,
what we know so far
about air pollution in our brain.
First, there is an emerging
body of evidence
regarding the potential harmful effects
of air pollutants
into our central nervous system.
But let’s go back to the toxic particles.
Remember?
We left them at the lungs,
enjoying life,
polluting everything.
But now the smallest of them,
they can cross into the bloodstream,
and from the bloodstream,
pumped by the heart,
they can reach the whole body,
threatening every organ,
including the brain.
We used to say that
air pollution has no borders,
and it’s true as well within our bodies,
because air pollutants will cross
the placental barrier
and reach the fetus and alter
the cerebral cortex of our children
even before they take their first breath.
Second, several studies have suggested
that both prenatal and early childhood
long-term exposure to air pollution
will have a negative influence
on neural development,
will have lower cognitive test outcomes,
and there will be an influence as well,
a negative influence,
on some behavioral disorders like autism
and attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder.
In addition to that, some evidence found
that exposing our children’s
and young adults' brains
for a long time to particulate matter
will cause some reactions
like brain inflammation,
altering the neural response
and [also] leading to the influence
of more protein plaques
that are accumulating,
and those can increase
the risks for diseases
like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Ironic, isn’t it:
we are investing in our children’s future,
we are sending them to school
every day to expand their minds,
the society is investing
in their education,
and yet the air they breathe
while waiting for the school bus
is influencing negatively
the development of their brain.
Let’s go to the third: What about adults?
According to recent scientific evidence,
long-term exposure to particulate matter
will cause a cognitive decline
in study participants as they age.
And not only that,
if you expose them to long-term,
very fine particulate matter,
their brain will age more rapidly,
and they will have higher odds
of having small, silent strokes.
The last one – and I will not
give you more evidence,
because there is a ton of [it] –
some epidemiological studies
in animal models
have suggested that there might be
an increased risk of dementia
with sustained exposure to air pollutants.
So, almost everybody
is exposed to air pollution.
Whether you live in a rural area
or an urban area,
whether you live in a high-income country
or a low-income country,
everybody’s brains, including yours,
are at risk.
As a medical doctor,
I have been dedicating
the last more than 20 years now
of my professional life
to raise awareness about
public health issues,
public health risks,
at the World Health Organization,
and I know that the knowledge is there
and the solutions as well.
Sure, some places
are more polluted than others,
but this a global issue,
and no individual, no city,
no group, no country, no region
will be able to solve it alone.
We need very strong commitments
and very strong action by everyone:
civil society,
private sector,
even individuals.
We all have a role to play.
Yes, we need to influence
the way we consume,
the way we commute,
the way we use our energy.
And the good thing is that
all of those solutions are available.
The question is, if we postpone
action by one day,
there might be thousands
of lives that we will lose,
but if we postpone it by one year,
we might be losing again seven million.
So every policy maker, every politician,
needs to be aware of
the consequences on human health
of postponing their decisions.
In fact,
this is not the first time in history
that we are confronted
with the risks of this invisible killer.
This was London in 1952,
and as was done in London
in the ’50s and the ’60s,
governments and cities,
they need to take urgent action to stop
the terrible impact of air pollution.
Every politician must know that delaying
what they call the tough actions,
like reducing traffic in cities
or investing in public transport
and engaging in promoting
cycling in cities,
investing in renewable energy,
promoting cleaner energy
for cooking, cooling
and transportation and heating
are solutions that are very smart,
because, in fact, they reduce emissions,
they improve air quality
in line with WHO standards,
which are the standards
that will protect ourselves.
So in fact, all politicians that we need
these very strong political commitments
and political will from,
but [we need] all of them now.
Those who fail, who postpone action,
they have been requested even
to defend their position in court.
And from now on,
no politician will be able
to say, “I didn’t know.”
So the question here is:
How many lives,
loss of quality of life
and losing our brain power
are we ready to accept?
If the answer is “none,”
I will request that you,
while our brains are still functioning,
while we are still intelligent,
please exercise your right,
put pressure on your politicians
and make sure that they take action
to stop the sources of air pollution.
This is the first thing we need to do
to protect yourself
and to protect our beautiful brain.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)