People In Mexico City Losing Their Sense of Smell. Produced by theEMBARQ Network on Vimeo.

Rhys Thom and I recently visited Mexico City where we met with two researchers at UNAM - Mexico’s National University - who are doing some fascinating research. Robyn Hudson, a charismatic professor, originally from Australia who has been living in Mexico City for quite some time, and her colleague Marco Guarneros, a fellow biomedical researcher, conducted a study comparing the ability of Mexico City’s residents to detect certain smells, with the ability of people living in a Tlaxcala, a neighboring town. Mexico City and Tlaxcala are similar in many respects - they share a similar culture and climate, situated high in the mountains of Mexico. But there is one crucial difference: Mexico City has much higher levels of air pollution.

When compared to their neighbors, people living in Mexico City need higher concentrations of a smell in order to identify it, a clear indication that their sense of smell is deteriorating.
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Smog in the city. Photo by A30_Tsitika.

Residents of Mexico City have a much poorer sense of smell than their counterparts in the neighboring state of Tlaxcala due, in large part, to the poorer air quality in the Mexican capital. A study by Robyn Hudson, Aline Arriola, Margarita Martinez, and Hans Distel - researchers at UNAM, Mexico’s national university - suggests that the cause is exposure to abnormally high levels of ozone, a chemical compound known to damage the olfactory mucosa, the part of the nose that allows odors to be detected.

“For a megacommunity like Mexico City with more than 20 million inhabitants, this could constitute an important public health issue,” the researchers wrote. The study notes that chilangos, as residents of Mexico City affectionately refer to themselves, had more difficultly identifying trace smells of coffee and orange juice than people who live in neighboring Tlaxcala. What’s more, they had more trouble differentiating between two traditional Mexican drinks, horchata and atole.

For sometime it has been known that air pollution causes all sorts of health problems, including ailments like asthma, bronchitis, and irregular heartbeats. Read the rest of this entry »

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