HEALTH HITS

1 MOUTHGUARDS MAY REDUCE HOCKEY CONCUSSIONS

Youth hockey players who wear mouthguards to protect their teeth and jaws may also have significantly lower odds of concussion, a Canadian study suggests. Concussions are the most common injury in youth hockey, and while Hockey Canada has a policy requiring mouthguard use, it’s not universally enforced, said senior study author Brent Hagel. The new evidence that mouthguards may reduce concussion risk adds to the case for making them mandatory, Hagel and his colleagues write in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

2 HEAVY TRAFFIC POLLUTION MAY AFFECT KIDS’ BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

High levels of exposure to traffic-related air pollution at a very young age may lead to structural changes in the brain, a new imaging study suggests. Brain scans of 12-year-old children show reduced thickness of the cortex and decreased grey matter volume in those who lived fewer than 400 metres from a major highway at age one, according to a report in PLOS ONE.

3 TEENS BREATHE LESS SECOND-HAND SMOKE AFTER CAR SMOKING BAN

A law in the U.K. banning smoking in cars carrying children has been associated with a reduction in second-hand smoke exposure among teens. England banned smoking in vehicles carrying kids in 2015, and Scotland followed suit in 2016, researchers note in Thorax. They examined survey data collected in 2012, 2014 and 2016 from 15,318 teens in England and 822 in Scotland. The proportion of youth ages 13 to 15 who reported being exposed to secondhand smoke in cars dropped to 1.6 per cent from 6.3 per cent in England and to 1.3 per cent from 3.4 per cent in Scotland. The ban in England was associated with a 72 per cent reduction in exposure to tobacco smoke among teens in this age group.