Bay Area Air Quality and Brain Damage Convo

This post is inspired by a Facebook exchange I had the other day... I will paraphrase and not name names

The original poster was lamenting that not enough people were wearing masks, and don't seem to care, so I said how about telling people that smoke inhalation causes brain damage right away. Another poster said I was being extreme, and could I back that up?

I decided to see if I could. My logic for this is as follows: smoke inhalation leads to particulate inhalation (PM2.5 and PM10), also toxin inhalation (burning cars and buildings generates many things, I would expect) both of which impair respiratory function. Impaired respiratory function causes a lack of oxygen in the blood, which in turn causes loss of oxygen to the brain. The brain being the most exquisitely sensitive tissue to oxygen loss, gets damaged.
As the mother of an asthmatic kid, this link was hammered into my head repeatedly by ER nurses and doctors, and while yes, a developing brain is more of a risk, I expect this holds true throughout our lives.

SO, to the reference material:

Brain Damage Following Smoke Inhalation and Skin Burn

Anita Randolph, 

Koji Ihara, 

Kenneth Escobar, 

Satoshi Fukuda, 

John Randall Salsbury, 

Donald Prough,

David Herndon, and 

Perenlei Enkhbaatar

In this article, they actually exposed sheep to smoke inhalation (and skin burns), and then measured the damage to brain tissue and found it. This is the most solid evidence I was able to find of a direct scientific experiment, albeit on sheep.




https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/09/news-air-quality-brain-cognitive-function/?fbclid=IwAR1Mj18K9VNEfDKf9FDNRMoVyimM6D2LER4PuyMc1peaRYV-PiSAwzffhxQ