Chronic exposure to air pollution can cause harm to cognitive performance, a new study reveals. Researchers believe that the negative impact increases with age, and affects men with less education the worst. Over four years, the maths and verbal skills of some 20,000 people in China were monitored by the US-Chinese study.
The study was based on measurements of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and particulates smaller than 10 micrometres in diameter where participants lived. It is not clear how much each of these three pollutants is to blame. Carbon monoxide, ozone and larger particulates were not included in the study.
In this study, researchers tested people of both sexes aged 10 and above between 2010 and 2014, with 24 standardised maths questions and 34 word-recognition questions. Exposure to high levels of polluted air "can cause everyone to reduce their level of education by one year..., which is huge," one of the co-authors, Xi Chen of the Yale School of Public Health, told the Guardian newspaper.
One of the reasons the researchers suggest older men with less education were worst affected by chronic exposure to air pollution is because those subjects often work outdoor manual jobs.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45326598
New conspiracy theory: They want to pollute the air so more people would be stupid enough to fall for silly conspiracy theories!
ReplyDeleteLike reverse chemtrails... they want to make you so stupid that you won't believe they're making you stupid...
ReplyDeleteThat's not actually so far off. A friend of mine worked for the Environmental Protection Agency and they had to go into some parts of the country under cover to secretly clean up lead contamination in the water because previous EPA visits had resulted in locals shooting at them. Because, you know, a clean environment is really a front for gu'mmint spies to take their land or whatever they thought.
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