Vitamin B could help mitigate the effects of the most dangerous type of air pollution, according to a new study published Monday.
In the first study of its kind, a team of international researchers looked at the damage caused by one of the pollutants that has the most severe impact on health: PM2.5.
The team found that something as simple as a daily vitamin B supplement could potentially reduce the impact of the tiny particles on the human body, although they stressed that research was in its early stages and the sample size was small.
According to the WHO, 92% of the world's population lives in places where the PM2.5 level exceeds the recommended threshold.
For this study, published in the science journal PNAS, 10 volunteers were initially exposed to clean air and given a placebo to check their baseline responses.
The group then took another placebo for four weeks before being exposed to heavily polluted air from downtown Toronto, where an estimated 1,000 cars pass every hour.
The bad air was delivered to the volunteers through an "oxygen type" face mask.
The experiment was then repeated, with each volunteer taking a B vitamin supplement daily -- made up of 2.5 mg of folic acid, 50 mg of vitamin B6, and 1 mg of vitamin B12.
B6 can be found in liver, chicken and nuts, amongst other things, and B12 in fish, meat, eggs, milk and some cereals.
The researchers found that four weeks of B vitamin supplements reduced the damage of PM2.5 exposure by 28-76%.
The results highlight how prevention at an individual level could be used to fight the adverse effects of PM2.5, the researchers said.
Source：CNN