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How Climate Change Affects Our Brains
Did you know that climate change impacts our nervous systems?
Posted February 24, 2022 Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster
Key points
- Climate change causes harm to our brains, as well as our mental and physical health.
- The neurological impact of global warming includes increased risk for dementia, amnesia, and epilepsy, among others.
- The brains of children and teens are especially susceptible to the adverse effects of climate change.
When I was a little girl, my favorite thing to do was to listen to my grandmother’s stories. During mealtimes, we would all sit at the dining table, and I would beg my grandmother to tell me memories from her childhood in Istanbul, Turkey, where I was born and raised.
My grandmother had several stories on repeat, but there was one particular that I loved the most, which was about her swimming in the Bosphorus, the narrow waterway that connects the European coast of the city to the Asian side.
As children, my grandmother and her siblings would jump in the water from the front of their home and let the current carry them through until they would reach their friends’ house, where they would leave the turquoise-colored waters to collect mulberries from the trees in their friends’ garden.
This bucolic memory always amazed me because the Bosphorus I saw was quite different. My Bosphorus was surrounded by gray-colored cement buildings with almost no greens around. The water somewhat preserved its color but was too dirty even to imagine swimming in it. The chaotic, loud, and metropolitan city I got to experience every day seemed worlds away from the idyllic scene that my grandmother described in her stories. It was hard to believe that they were the same city fifty years apart.
But that was about thirty years ago. Today, the Bosphorus looks even more different. Last summer, it got blanketed with a thick layer of viscous and smelly sea snot called mucilage that threatened the underwater marine life and the livelihood of local fishermen. Even though mucilage incidents had happened before, they had never been so excessive, far-reaching, harmful, and long-lasting.
Unfortunately, the escalated case of massive algae blooms is not unique to my hometown. Rising temperatures and higher pollution levels due to climate change have resulted in a global surge in algal blooms in recent decades, causing a significant drop in oxygen levels in hundreds of lakes and water sources worldwide. These blooms are not only harmful to the aquatic ecosystems and local economies but can also have a severe impact on human health.
Climate Change Harms Cognition and Brain Function
Some of these algal blooms, for example, are known to produce neurotoxins, which accumulate in fish and other seafood and can cause neurological damage, such as amnesia, epilepsy, parkinsonian- and dementia-like symptoms, in humans who consume the contaminated fish and water. These toxins have even been shown to cross the placenta and accumulate in the amniotic fluid disrupting neurodevelopment in fetuses. Similarly, long-term exposure to air pollution and fine inhalable particles, known as PM 2.5, have been strongly linked to increased risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s. Most recently, researchers have found an association between extreme heat waves and worsening symptoms of mood or anxiety disorders, substance use disorders, schizophrenia, and suicide risk.
These are just some of the ways we know climate change can cause harm to our brains. But, there is still so much we don’t know about, mostly because our brains are very adaptable and can mask the harm done for many years. For instance, the majority of people with neurodegenerative diseases–such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s–don’t show any behavioral or physical symptoms until mid-to-late-life, even though they had a history of harmful exposure or physical trauma that might have triggered their disease decades earlier.
Most often, by the time patients seek neurologists’ help, more than 50 percent of their nerve cells have already died, and their diseases are at an irreversible stage. That is why it is likely that we won’t see the true toll of our current exposure to pollutants, heavy metals, and toxins years and years from now when it might be too late.
We are already facing an epidemic of neurodegenerative diseases. More than six million Americans alone are living with Alzheimer’s today. This number is projected to more than double in the next thirty years. And, after decades of research, we still don’t have a cure or even ways to truly slow down these diseases. In the next fifty years or so, we will not only see millions of more people with these fatal and incurable disorders, but with the effects of climate change, we will likely see them occurring at much earlier stages of life.
The Brains of Children and Teens Are the Most Sensitive
What’s worse is that the dynamic, developing brains of children and adolescents are the ones that are the most susceptible to the adverse effects of climate change. Researchers have found a strong link between traffic-related air pollution and an increased risk for changes in brain development, resulting in lower IQs, poorer ability to do tasks that require hand-eye coordination, and neurodevelopmental disorders in children and teens.
Similarly, hyperthermia caused by increased heat exposure has been shown to modify brain development and cause long-term learning and memory deficits. Some studies even predict that increasing water temperatures brought on by a warming planet could result in 96 percent of the world’s population not having access to omega-3 fatty acids, which are critical for healthy brain development.
Even though we don’t know much about the process, some of these harmful effects are thought to be passed on from parents to their children, who may never get exposed to the harmful pollutants themselves. These are some things that need to be seriously considered when assessing the true impact of climate change on our health. We may not see the real damage for many, many years, and we may not be the only ones affected by them.
I don’t know if I will ever get to swim in the Bosphorus in my lifetime the way my grandmother did as a child. But, I believe that with our actions against climate change today, we can leave an idyllic enough world to our children so that they can share bucolic stories with their grandchildren someday.
More on how climate change affects our brains can be seen here.
