Work out in polluted air and you may miss out on some of the brain benefits of exercise, according to two, large-scale new studies of exercise, air quality and brain health...

[Typically] exercise is strongly linked with lower risks for dementia and other memory problems with age. But air pollution has the opposite effects on brains...And in a 2021 study of rats housed in cages placed near a heavily trafficked, exhaust-clogged road tunnel in Northern California, most of those bred with a predisposition to a rodent analogue of Alzheimer’s disease soon developed dementia. But so did another set of rats with no genetic inclination to the disease.

...Pamela Lein, a professor of neurotoxicity at the University of California, Davis, who led the earlier study of rats and pollution [said] “The observation that air pollution negates the well-established beneficial effects of exercise on brain health is alarming and increases the urgency for developing more-effective regulatory policies” related to air quality.

Read the full article by Gretchen Reynolds on the New York Times here.

Review the UC Davis air quality research study "The Effects of Chronic Exposure to Ambient Traffic-Related Air Pollution on Alzheimer’s Disease Phenotypes in Wildtype and Genetically Predisposed Male and Female Rats" online here. This research was conducted by Kelley T. Patten, Anthony E. Valenzuela, Christopher Wallis, Elizabeth L. Berg, Jill L. Silverman, Keith J. Bein, Anthony S. Wexler, and Pamela J. Lein from UC Davis.