Long-term exposure to air pollution could impact Parkinson’s disease mortality risk

New research has suggested that long-term exposure to air pollutants could increase the risk of death from Parkinson’s.

A team of European researchers conducted the study, published in the journal ‘Environment International’, as part of the Effects of Low-Level Air Pollution: A Study in Europe (ELAPSE) project – a Europe-wide initiative looking at the effects of low air pollution levels on people’s health.

The researchers used ELAPSE’s datasets to analyse figures for over 200,000 adults from six European countries. They also looked at air pollution models, estimating the concentrations of air pollutants in these countries to explore the link between pollution exposure and deaths from Parkinson’s.

The results suggest that long-term exposure to PM2.5 particles at high levels was associated with a 25% higher risk of death from the condition, and the authors of the study added that the research “adds strong evidence in support of an association between air pollution and Parkinson’s.”

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