A growing body of research suggests that air pollution affects our brains. Lifetime exposure to poor air quality has been associated with disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. A new study finds even short-term exposure to polluted air can cause challenges for cognitive functioning, including selective attention and emotional regulation. Specifically, researchers wanted to examine the effects of short-term exposure to the most common form of air pollution, PM2.5, particulate matter several times finer than human hair that’s found in vehicle exhaust, industrial processing and wildfire smoke. Researchers conducted a cognitive test on 26 healthy adults. Half the participants were exposed to clean air, and the other half were put in a closed room in which two candles were recently extinguished, exposing them to candle smoke, which contains PM2.5. The participants remained in each room for one hour, then waited four hours, after which they took a series of tests. The people exposed to the candle smoke scored poorly on tests that evaluated ability to stay focused on a task and had a reduced ability to detect and interpret emotions. Previous studies have also linked poor air quality to the inability to focus, a core symptom of ADHD, and reduced ability to identify emotions, a core symptom of autism. The new study only looked at adults. However, Tom Faherty, the study’s lead author and a research fellow at the University of Birmingham, U.K., told Mongabay by phone, “It really does stand to reason that if we see those…This article was originally published on Mongabay