Air pollution directly linked to increased dementia risk

Are there studies showing indoor air pollution from cooking in a residential setting is linked to dementia?

I've seen media reports from China about elevated lung cancer rates in non-smoking women. Just as scary, IMO. That being said, Chinese cooking makes much greater usage of stir-frying, and it's well known that most residential ventilation hoods are wholly inadequate for the task.

Not sure - it may very well be a different kind of pollution, but the raw PM2.5 values definitely look scary fast with any kind of "dry" cooking where you're browning anything

Good question, but I will say yes just based on the science I know. The type of pollutant does not matter, it is whatever effects heat shock proteins to effect protein folding.

Heat shock proteins (and cold shock proteins) are affected by more than temperature, but temperature is really important as well.[1][2]

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21848409/ [2] https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/80/4/glae...

Study: Household fuel use and motoric cognitive risk syndrome among older adults: Evidence from cohort study and life course analysis

Link: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12413735/

Conclusion: "Clean fuel use for cooking and transitioning from solid to clean fuels decreases MCRS risk among older adults. Moreover, earlier adoption of clean cooking fuels is associated with a lower prevalence of MCRS in later life..."

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Study: Association between cooking fuels and mild cognitive impairment among older adults from six low- and middle-income countries

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-17216-w

Conclusion: "In this large representative sample of older adults from multiple LMICs, unclean cooking fuel and a lack of chimney or hood when cooking were associated with a higher risk of MCI..."

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Study: Household air pollution from solid fuel use as a dose-dependent risk factor for cognitive impairment in northern China

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10074-6

Conclusions (summarized by ChatGPT):

> People who use solid fuels (like wood, coal, or crop residue) for cooking or heating tend to do worse on cognitive tests compared to those who use clean fuels (like electricity or natural gas). This effect shows up across several areas of thinking, but the biggest impacts were on attention (for cooking) and orientation (for heating).

> The more often people currently use solid fuel stoves, the worse they do on attention-related tasks. For example: if someone cooks with a solid fuel stove 100 extra days in a year, their attention score drops by about 0.05 points (a small but measurable decline).

> Long-term exposure matters too. For every 5 extra years of solid fuel stove use (over the past 20 years), people scored about 0.07 points lower in attention tests. In other words: the longer you’ve been exposed, the worse your performance tends to be.

The raw PM2.5 values also skyrocket with just boiling tap water, on my Ikea Vindstyrka. Which makes me question how useful it is, presumably even with "dry" cooking a lot of meats and vegetables have water in them?

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/vindstyrka-air-quality-sensor-s...

It's actually not been established (at least, to the best of my knowledge) that PM2.5 caused by water vapor is any less harmful than other types of PM2.5 particulates.

And sure, yes, it's just water and its entirely plausible that water based PM2.5 is completely harmless... but wouldn't it be good to know that for sure?

Wouldn't that suggest that, at least to some degree, dementia would be elevated in humid vs. dry climates?

Sauna ritual life would make an interesting comparison.

Water particles vs water vapor