air quality has been so much better locally since they shut down the coal-fired power plants. smog days are a thing of the past. meanwhile my friend who has spent her working career not at but within the actual elevated cancer risk radius of the steel mills, where the guys who work the coke ovens achieve 25-year status after 20 years, not to mention that in adjacent offices employees must evacuate whenever this one air quality siren goes off, and where vehicles in the parking lot are coated with crap falling out of the air all day, that friend is spending this year fighting stage III cancer. oh and by the way she has a bunch of other factors coming into play as well, including lifestyle. can't blame it all on the air pollution by any stretch.
Magnetite pollution nanoparticles in the human brain
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/39/10797.short
We identify the abundant presence in the human brain of magnetite nanoparticles that match precisely the high-temperature magnetite nanospheres, formed by combustion and/or friction-derived heating, which are prolific in urban, airborne particulate matter (PM). Because many of the airborne magnetite pollution particles are <200 nm in diameter, they can enter the brain directly through the olfactory nerve and by crossing the damaged olfactory unit. This discovery is important because nanoscale magnetite can respond to external magnetic fields, and is toxic to the brain, being implicated in production of damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS). Because enhanced ROS production is causally linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, exposure to such airborne PM-derived magnetite nanoparticles might need to be examined as a possible hazard to human health.
Human health effects of air pollution
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/do ... 1&type=pdf
"The different composition of air pollutants, the dose and time of exposure and the fact that humans are usually exposed to pollutant mixtures than to single substances, can lead to diverse impacts on human health. Human health effects can range from nausea and difficulty in breathing or skin irritation, to cancer. They also include birth defects, serious developmental delays in children, and reduced activity of the immune system, leading to a number of diseases. Moreover, there exist
several susceptibility factors such as age, nutritional status and predisposing conditions...
The human body, in order to protect itself against the potential harmful insults from the environment, is equipped with drug or xenobiotic metabolising enzymes (DMEs or XMEs) that play a central role in the biotransformation, metabolism and/or detoxification of xenobiotics or foreign compounds, including different kinds of pollutants. XMEs include a variety of enzymes such as cytochrome P450 (P450 or CYP), epoxide hydrolase, glutathione transferase, UDP-glucuronosyltransferase, sulfotransferase, NAD(P)H quinone oxidoreductase 1, and aldo-keto reductase. These enzymes mainly participate in the conversion of xenobiotics to more polar and water-soluble metabolites, which are readily excreted from the body. Finally, it should be noted that, in many cases, the chemically reactive metabolites produced during metabolism, are equally harmful and therefore undergo additional metabolism to inactive products. Hence, the final outcome of a compound modulating the detoxification enzyme systems is the result the effects on the different metabolic pathways. A number of substances of dietary nature are beneficial, protective, and supportive of good health and the body’s own natural chelation mechanisms. They include nutrients with natural chelating properties, which may help to detoxify the body, such as antioxidants, herbs, minerals, essential amino acids, other detoxifying or protective agents, and fiber (Kelly, 2004). Among them dietary antioxidants contribute to the organism’s antioxidant defence system, that includes a series of antioxidant enzymatic (e.g. peroxidase) and nonenzymatic compounds (such as glutathione, or food-derived like vitamin E, or polyphenols), as well as damage removal/repair enzymes.
Several natural compounds, such as vitamins C, E, and A and polyphenols, found in the majority of plant foods, interfere with or scavenge ROS concentration within cells and subsequently protect the organism from the adverse effects of oxidative stress. Indeed, as it has been shown by our group that the antioxidant activity of plasma in humans following a diet rich in vegetables, fruits and olive oil was increased in comparison to a normal diet (Kampa et al., 2002). This increase can be mainly attributed to polyphenols which exhibit a wide range of biological activities, including anti-tumorigenic, anti-mutagenic, anti-inflammatory, and antiviral actions (Bravo, 1998; Hertog and Hollman, 1996) mainly due to their antioxidant properties and their ability to exert inhibitory effects by affecting basic cellular functions."
kinda weird:
Encapsulated Magnetite Nanoparticles: Preparation and Application as Multifunctional Tool for Drug Delivery Systems
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 8557000064
"Encapsulated magnetite nanoparticles (NPs) as a part of drug delivery systems have a good perspective for their tracking, navigation, and remote activation. Embedding of NPs to the drug delivery carriers can allow us to decrease the toxicity of magnetite NPs, to vary a contrast of T1 and T2 MRI imaging, and to apply the alternative magnetic field for controlled release of encapsulated bioactive substances. The efficiency and safety of magnetite NPs as a multifunctional tool for drug delivery systems have also been discussed."