Air Pollution Causes 'Huge' Reduction in Intelligence, Study Reveals (theguardian.com)

Air pollution causes a "huge" reduction in intelligence, according to new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health. From a report: The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost a year of the person's education. "Polluted air can cause everyone to reduce their level of education by one year, which is huge," said Xi Chen at Yale School of Public Health in the US, a member of the research team. "But we know the effect is worse for the elderly, especially those over 64, and for men, and for those with low education. If we calculate [the loss] for those, it may be a few years of education."

The damage in intelligence was worst for those over 64 years old, with serious consequences, said Chen: "We usually make the most critical financial decisions in old age." Rebecca Daniels, from the UK public health charity Medact, said: "This report's findings are extremely worrying." [...] The new work, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analysed language and arithmetic tests conducted as part of the China Family Panel Studies on 20,000 people across the nation between 2010 and 2014. The scientists compared the test results with records of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide pollution.

Comments

don't even get the basics right

[ooloorie]

Air Pollution Causes 'Huge' Reduction in Intelligence, Study Reveals. The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost a year of the person's education.

Fortunately, this isn't much of a concern for the US:

Americans are blessed with clean air. The vast majority of the United States experiences “good” air quality. Even in the isolated areas without “good” air quality, air quality is merely “moderate.”

It's more of a concern for Europe:

European air quality isn’t too great, either. For all the hype about “green” energy programs in Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other European nations, “good” air quality is rare outside of Scandinavia. Central Europe fares worst, with the UK, France, and Germany not far behind.

As an aside, expressing intelligence in terms of "years of education" is questionable because intelligence cannot actually be increased significantly by education.

Re:don't even get the basics right

[Sique]

I took another look at the map the article is using. Apparently, it's a real time map, and the screen shot of the !Forbes article was taken at 16:00 UTC, which means Evening rush hour in Europe, while in the U.S., the day has just begun. If you look at the map right now (6:00 UTC), Europe looks fine (just Eastern Poland and Central Spain with moderate air quality, everything else good), while in the U.S., most of the East Coast, Appalachia and the Midwest has moderate and partly unsafe for special groups air quality, same in California and in some of the other large population centers. Only the more sparsely populated areas are fine.

Re:Living in cities

[110010001000]

The funny part is the rural areas are the most socialist of all. They survive on farm subsidies and public roads built with taxpayer money. But yeah, you guys sure are tough and independent.

Re:This is not science

[Michael Woodhams]

Sometimes you need an answer to a question and population statistics and correlation are all that you can use.

"I propose to raise 200 kids identically except with 100 kids getting to live in polluted air and 100 control kids in clean air, and then we'll give them IQ tests and stuff when they are 20."

Research funder: "It would take 20 years to get an answer? No funds for you. We have decisions we need to make NOW."
Then, should it somehow get that far:
Ethics committee: "Hell, no."

So instead you make a list of every confounding factor you can think of (maybe being poor causes lower intelligence, and poor people often have no choice but to live in polluted areas, so you measure household income during childhood for your cohort), do a big multi-dimensional regression, and see what factors influence the result.

This isn't perfect - in particular, there might be an important factor that you didn't think of, or is too hard to measure, which correlates with pollution level. In the end, you have decisions to make (how much should we spend to mitigate air pollution?) and it is daft to refuse to do population statistics studies because you could only be 98% confident in their results rather than 100% confident.

Also, such studies are usually just part of the answer. There are also studies looking for plausibility of mechanisms. One group shows that certain pollutants can get from the air into blood. Another group shows that these chemicals can cross the blood-brain barrier. Another group shows that these chemical interact with neurotransmitters. The population study shows pollution having an adverse effect on intelligence. Put all this together and you have a plausible causal story.

We also don't have randomized controlled doubly blinded trials of the health effects of smoking, or of having a parachute when jumping out of an airplane.

Wind, hydro, and nuclear with a little natural gas

[blindseer]

It should not be difficult to fathom that much of the pollution in most every part of the world is from burning coal and liquid petroleum fuels. This is primarily from generating electricity and transportation. People don't burn these fuels because they want pollution, they burn them because they are cheap and convenient. To get cleaner air we need energy that is not just clean but also cheap and convenient. How shall we do this?

To get an engineering plan start with the cheapest electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Geothermal comes out on top. Natural gas is second. What's the next three, tossing out dirty coal? Hydro, nuclear, and wind.

While not a pollutant I'll take a short diversion and look at CO2 output of the different energy sources for electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The best three on that list is hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and solar make a good show as well. Natural gas isn't great but it is far better than coal.

Let's look at the energy sources with the best energy return on investment, because long term this will reflect on the cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If we toss out dirty oil and coal we again get the same top three, hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and natural gas make a good show as well.

Let's look at the safest energy sources, because even if we clean the air for health reasons it doesn't help if people are dead.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Hydro, nuclear, and wind top the list, solar certainly does well, and there's a wide margin to the rest. Geothermal is not on the list for some reason. Natural gas isn't great but better than coal and biomass fuel.

By my estimation we need to use hydro, nuclear, and wind for electricity. Until I can see more about geothermal I can't recommend it. Solar simply costs too much, is not very convenient/reliable, and isn't all that great on safety, so I can't recommend it unless all others are unavailable. Wind and nuclear need a little help to load follow and hydro works well for this. If there isn't enough hydro around then the obvious choice is natural gas.

When it comes to transportation we should electrify as much land transport as we can, cars and trains mostly. What do we do about vehicles where electricity is not practical? Mr. Pickens has a plan, natural gas.
http://pickensplan.com/the-pla...

Pickens admits that that natural gas is a bridge fuel. A bridge to what? Maybe synthesized fuel from hydro, nuclear, and wind, that's my guess. Natural gas burns far cleaner than gasoline, diesel, and marine fuel oil. Natural gas is a proven technology, cheap, plentiful, and can be adopted fairly quickly. At least adopted quickly for most transportation on land and sea. For air transportation we'll need to continue with kerosene until we find something better.

Natural gas is as convenient as electricity and gasoline combined for personal cars. People can fill up at a filling station in minutes like gasoline, and at home if you have natural gas service for heating and cooking. Maybe the best could be from a natural gas/electric hybrid.

At sea we can adopt more nuclear, beyond just warships. Perhaps even resurrect the windjammers, sailing ships built in the last days of sail using steel hulls and other modern materials.

I keep seeing articles on the problems of dirty, CO2 emitting, dangerous, and expensive energy. Let's talk solutions. Here's my solution... Wind, hydro, and nuclear with a little natural gas.