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Air pollution and brain damage: what the science says

Epidemiological studies have linked dirty air to dementia and other brain disorders. Now researchers are trying to determine how pollutants do their damage, and how much harm they cause.
By
  1. Liam Drew

    1. Liam Drew is a freelance writer based near London, UK.

A woman wearing a face mask amongst heavy smog looks to camera while sitting on her bike and speaking on a mobile phone

Research around the world has linked polluted air to increased risks of dementia, depression, anxiety and psychosis. Credit: Damir Sagolj/Reuters

In 2012, Deborah Cory-Slechta at the University of Rochester, New York, received a “bucket of brains”. A colleague had been studying how air pollution around the university harms the hearts and lungs of mice, and had asked Cory-Slechta to check the animals’ brains for damage. As a specialist in the neurotoxicity of lead, Cory-Slechta remembers thinking: ‘Air pollution? How bad could this be?’ But what she saw in those brains was so “astounding”, she says, that it shifted her entire research focus.

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Nature 637, 536-538 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00053-y

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