THE PSYCHOLOGIST

Living in an area with high levels of air pollution can increase your risk of developing macular degeneration and going BLIND, study warns

This is a typical rubbishy study of PM2.5 air pollution. It relies on the area a person lives in to describe anything about him/her. That quite different people might be living in the same area is not acounted for. We might, for instance, ask whrether or not it is mostly poor people who get AMD. No answer to that is available. All we are told is whether the sufferer lived in a poor area, which could mean many things. Their measure of pollution exposure was similarly inexact. They examined only whether a person lived in a polluted area. They had no estimate of how much pollution each person actually experienced.

There is however one thing unusual about this study. They found that many things -- such as living in a poor area -- DID affect the incidence of AMD but I can find no mention of the authors controlling for all such extraneous influences on the correlation between a polluted area and AMD incidence. We are thus left with the possible conclusion that it was other factors -- not pollution -- that increased levels of AMD. Poverty is one of the most common predictors of disease so we are quite at liberty to conclude from their report that it was poverty that caused poor eye function, not pollution. What a useless study!

Your risk of developing macular degeneration and going blind is increased by living in an area with a high level of air pollution, a study has warned.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a progressive form of vision loss that is the leading cause of blindness among UK adults aged 50 and over.

Known risk factors for AMD — alongside increasing age — include certain genetic factors and being a smoker.

Researchers from the UK studied data on 15,954 people — each of whom was aged 40–69 at the start of the study and initially reported no vision issues.

They monitored them for the development of AMD — and compared outcomes with the average level of air pollution where they lived.

They found that greater concentrations of air pollution were associated with up to an 8 per cent increase in the likelihood of developing macular degeneration.

Data for the study was collected by the UK Biobank, a large-scale database containing detailed genetic and health information on half-a-million participants.

Of the participants, 52,602 had their eyes examined and assessed for the structural changes in the thickness and numbers of receptors in the retina which are indicative of age-related macular degeneration.

The study used estimates of the average annual levels of air pollution at each subject's home address, considering pollutants such as fine particles (or PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide and nitrogen oxides which mainly come from vehicle exhausts.

The researchers found that just over 1 per cent of the study cohort — 1,286 people — ended up being diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration.

Once factors such as lifestyle and underlying health conditions were taken into account, the team found that participants exposed to higher concentrations of PM2.5 were 8 per cent more likely to develop AMD.

Exposure to PM2.5 and other pollutants was also found to be associated with changes in the structure of the subjects' retinas.

However, the team noted, the study was an observational one which did not intervene with people's lives and could not prove that pollution caused sight loss.

But it echoes previous findings, they said, which have suggested that higher exposure to air pollution may make retinal cells more vulnerable and thereby increase one's risk of AMD.

'Overall, our findings suggest that ambient air pollution, especially fine (particulate matter) or those of combustion-related particles, may affect AMD risk,' the researchers said.

'Our findings add to the growing evidence of the damaging effects of ambient air pollution, even in the setting of relative low exposure.'

Molecular ophthalmologist Chris Inglehearn of the University of Leeds, who was not involved in the present study, said that the paper — and another from Taiwan — have both shown a link between air pollution and age-related macular degeneration.

While the studies have not proven that pollution is causing AMD, he said, 'the fact that these two independent studies reach similar conclusions gives greater confidence that the link they make is real.'

'These studies provide further evidence that links air pollution with detrimental impacts on human health,' he concluded.

'Age-related macular degeneration is the most common cause of sight loss in the developed world and so this finding is significant,' added Robert MacLaren, an ophthalmology expert from the University of Oxford.

'Participants in the study had an average age of around 60 and this small increase risk of 8 per cent is likely to be compounded further over ensuing decades.'

The full findings of the study were published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9185329/Health-High-levels-air-pollution-increase-risk-macular-degeneration.html

The journal Abstract:

Association of ambient air pollution with age-related macular degeneration and retinal thickness in UK Biobank

By Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all

Abstract

Aim: To examine the associations of air pollution with both self-reported age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and in vivo measures of retinal sublayer thicknesses.

Methods: We included 115 954 UK Biobank participants aged 40–69 years old in this cross-sectional study. Ambient air pollution measures included particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). Participants with self-reported ocular conditions, high refractive error (< −6 or > +6 diopters) and poor spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) image were excluded. Self-reported AMD was used to identify overt disease. SD-OCT imaging derived photoreceptor sublayer thickness and retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) layer thickness were used as structural biomarkers of AMD for 52 602 participants. We examined the associations of ambient air pollution with self-reported AMD and both photoreceptor sublayers and RPE layer thicknesses.

Results: After adjusting for covariates, people who were exposed to higher fine ambient particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter <2.5 µm (PM2.5, per IQR increase) had higher odds of self-reported AMD (OR=1.08, p=0.036), thinner photoreceptor synaptic region (β=−0.16 µm, p=2.0 × 10−5), thicker photoreceptor inner segment layer (β=0.04 µm, p=0.001) and thinner RPE (β=−0.13 µm, p=0.002). Higher levels of PM2.5 absorbance and NO2 were associated with thicker photoreceptor inner and outer segment layers, and a thinner RPE layer. Higher levels of PM10 (PM with an aerodynamic diameter <10 µm) was associated with thicker photoreceptor outer segment and thinner RPE, while higher exposure to NOx was associated with thinner photoreceptor synaptic region.

Conclusion: Greater exposure to PM2.5 was associated with self-reported AMD, while PM2.5, PM2.5 absorbance, PM10, NO2 and NOx were all associated with differences in retinal layer thickness.

https://bjo.bmj.com/content/early/2021/01/11/bjophthalmol-2020-316218

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

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