Impact of Environmental Pollutants on Alzheimer’s Disease: A Review

Abstract

Environmental pollution is one of the major concerns as it affects public health and is responsible for various neurological disorders too. Neurological disorders are governed by many different factors - they can be genetic, based on lifestyle, or environmental. In many recent studies, it has been observed that exposure to many environmental pollutants increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Pollutants like PM 10, PM2.5, and some other ultrafine nanoparticles, lipophilic vaporized toxicant (acrolein) can easily reach the brain by crossing the blood-brain barrier after it they can activate the innate immune responses inside the target site like neurons, astrocytes, and microglia by this way they can be neurotoxic. Human epidemiological evidence proves that there is a correlation between environmental pollutants and neurological disorders like dysfunction of mitochondrial, oxidative stress, disruption in the myelin sheath, the blood-brain barrier anatomy alterations, and endoplasmic reticulum stress which direct towards cognitive impairment with lower quality of lifestyle. The review article aims to culminate the correlation between the environmental factors and Alzheimer’s disease, The different sources of pollution and their effect on various stages of human life, developmental neurotoxicity, and neurological disorders also have been discussed.