Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence: study
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Whenever somebody defends the quality of democratic representation in the UK, I just remind myself that these are people who would rather they and their own children suffered illness and premature death than take action that might piss off business and motorist lobbying groups.
I agree that scientific conclusions are sometime editorialized to convey the pressing nature of the findings (the evidence is what it is), but 100% wrong or 100% right I don't think it would do you much harm to reduce the amount of pollution you're exposed to on a daily basis.
And, as with Pascal's wager, that's unconvincing: one could spend all that money differently, on things one would like (just as in Pascal's wager, choosing to believe in God isn't cost-free: it means loving others, being charitable &c., even if one would rather not).
The worst case is that there is a positive effect from pollution. When one looks at the historic data it wasn't until people started living in smog filled cities that children started attending schools.
We shouldn't fall into the trap of assuming causation and correlation just because it gels with something in your subconscious.
Which is true most of the time..
I mean, people getting into an automobile for no good reason also thinks that they won't be the one that would end up dying or maimed in an accident. I mean, aren't we all guilty or dumb in that way?
That, or perhaps something even more sinister: they'd rather enjoy a 5 minute cigarette respite from life than live without that respite.
Lawmakers, too, have hellish lives. Turn a blind eye to stuff that doesn't matter here and how, and instead focus on getting whatever will better they and their families.
Does anyone do that any more? I thought most were in broad agreement that UK has one of the less representative democracies. We also have one of the most centralised democracies - local government has a tiny fraction of the power and proportion of budget that it had 50 years ago.
Which makes reading of cities around the world where it's significantly worse that much gloomier.
*Once a month on the assumption that most sessions are only attended by a handful of MPs.
On the other hand I once heard that the rich in Germany (in some places at least) have worse air quality than the poor, because the rich all have got their fireplaces going (how ironic is that?-)
Most sessions of the House are attended by a handful of MPs, because no real work is happening there. Meaningful debate in the House is rare, and the results of divisions (votes) are usually known ahead of time. And in any case a debate is not a good way to write any kind of document, so any MP actually wanting to make a difference is doing so in committees, which are not seen on TV nearly as often, but are pretty well attended from my quick scan of attendance records.
My local MP commutes, less than two hours each way - gets the same train home I was catching after visiting the (London) office, so leaving London just after 1900 on a weekday, to obviously the same city I live in on the coast.
Those who live further away have flats in London, they stay for four nights a week and go home at weekends. Indeed some of the last train services heading North on a Friday are almost explicitly for such MPs and staff. Kings Cross to Edinburgh on a Friday evening is not exactly a tourist route, it won't get there until after midnight.
Using an official car would be an unacceptable expense except for certain senior ministers (who work in London all the time, e.g. the Prime Minister and often senior cabinet ministers live there) and it's frowned on even then, one of the few good things you can say about Boris (Johnson, the city's previous mayor) is that he rode a bicycle a lot rather than constantly getting official cars just a few miles up the road.
MPs are also often around, even if they are not in the Commons chamber. They are generally aware of proceedings in the chamber, and come in when there is a vote that is relevant.
I don't think it's common for MPs to bring their families to London for "years on end". Most MPs will have a flat they use when in London (probably in a nice building with HVAC, well away from the most polluted roads and neighbourhoods). But they will typically maintain their main residence in/near their home constituencies.
Likewise for the Lords. Most of them commute and don't spend all that much time in London.
Why? You can't just say that and expect people to trust you. The fact that they followed the same people may reduce the chances of certain DNA traits having an effect but how does that rule out other commonalities in environmental conditions. If you're in a polluted city it seems likely that you're in a large city. So do all the common traits of a large city also reduce your intelligence?
I want to read the study but I don't want to subscribe. If there is logical proof in the study that this is not simply a correlation, the guardian piece does not represent it.
http://aqicn.org/map/london/ http://aqicn.org/map/jiyuan http://aqicn.org/map/delhi
EDIT: Disregard this stuffy reply, my humor detector was off.
Jokes aside, London isn't very polluted compared to a lot of large cities in the eastern hemisphere.
There have been studies that show high amounts of road traffic cause increased secretions of a certain enzyme into the frontal cortex, causing high levels of stress and increased memory loss.
"logical proof" - your wording.
Your confusion stems from equating these two.
I am particular interested in these studies because my family lives in a very clean rural mountainous area in Thailand and my son is attending a pretty good international school here. But I am considering moving him to a bigger and better school in Bangkok - a dirty, polluted, congested city. If this study is true then am I really gaining anything? The difficult tradeoff was health impact for improved educational opportunity. But if the pollution equates to a one year loss of education then maybe there is little to no gain.
Personally, I think that a much better move is to stay where you are and instead save up to fund a one-year exchange to a prestigious international university when he's been at some national university for a couple of years. AFAIK many prestigious universities accept almost an unlimited number of international exchange students, as long as they can pay the tuition fees.
First issue with the school is the quality of classmates. It is a small school with small classes, which is good, right? Except there are only six students in his class this year and his classmates are generally low achievers, poor English speakers, and pretty lousy friends. I want him to be surrounded by high achievers and have some choices when it comes to friends. Seems unlikely that will ever happen at this school.
Second issue is that the school is pretty stagnant. At a time when international schools in Thailand are booming, adding new campuses and programs every year, this school is just plodding along with its old tired facilities and pathetic extracurricular offerings. I've been trying to make up for that with lots of after school activities like having our own little Maker Space, doing robotics, and visiting the museums and children's activity centers in Thailand which are very good. But he doesn't get to do that stuff with kids his age because of issue number one.
I was a volunteer judge earlier this year at a robotics competition held at one of the international schools in Bangkok. I got to see what a number of schools are doing and it is pretty impressive. One of the schools I particularly like has a STEM program in association with MIT, and a performing arts program in association with Juilliard. They are also introducing robotics into the primary curriculumn this year. Impressive stuff.
I'm planning to do as you suggested but that is still a number of years away. Need to figure out what I'm going to do near term. And moving to Bangkok just seems so painful.
Ok, enough of this long winded personal issues rant.
Since your son is likely very good with English already, it might not be necessary for him to continue studying in an international school (I understand there are trade-offs). It might be worth it if he moves to a top local school, where more high achievers study instead.
For something more specific, I think I might be of some help. Please send me an email (in my profile) if you'd like.
I'd say your child would gain much more from having good private tutors you hand-pick from local schools/universities/private tutoring centers (depending on the level of your son's attainment and the qualifications of the teachers). Also, for certain subjects, you could be a great teacher yourself.
Even without taking pollution impact into account, using the hours saved from commuting in a very congested city to study one-on-one or in a small group would likely net a bigger gain than what quality difference there is between the good local school and a top school in the capital city. The key conditions are 1) having qualified tutors who fit with the student's personality and interests and 2) regular schedule so the student does not spend the extra hours playing mobile games instead.
Another key advantage is your child can use the best educational materials available on the Web, paid and free, such as Khan Academy, 3Blue1Brown, and the likes for learning. The presentations there are often head-and-shoulders above the techniques most school teachers typically use to explain concepts in class.
Edit: For a downvoter who I assume might disagree with the last paragraph, you need to go visit average schools in a developing country to see how the teaching is like.
[0] http://health.utah.gov/enviroepi/healthyhomes/epht/AirPollut...
Do they perform on the normal level after the pollution? That would be a hint that the results of the IQ tests just temporarily drop (I would be careful to say that the intelligence dropped).
If people leave the polluted area, they'll restore their normal intelligence. When I hear "reduction in intelligence", I immediately think that they talk about permanent reduction (because a big part of fluid intelligence is genetics, the efficiency of synapses and the amount of neurons - although some research [1] indicates that nurture and training can have significant effects on fluid intelligence).
It's unclear if they talk about permanent and irreversible damage IMO. For me it seems like they want to frame it that way which could be a bit clickbait-y depending on the matter of facts.
First, in general, air pollution inhibits respondents ’ test performance. Except for the effects of 1-d and 7-d air pollution exposure on math test scores (first and second columns in panel B), all of the coefficients for mean APIs over a longer period are negative and statistically significant.
Second, the damage of air pollution on cognitive performance is more sizable when using longer window of exposure measure. As shown at the bottom in panel A, an increase in the 7-d-mean API by 1 SD lowers verbal test scores by 0.278 point (0.026 SD), while a 1 SD increase in average API over 3 y before the interview is associated with 1.132 points (0.108 SD) drop in verbal test scores.
Third, air pollution exposure appears to exert a more negative effect on verbal test performance than math test performance.
That doesn't imply that the effect is irreversible, but it does mean that there are long-term changes which accumulate with longer exposure to air pollution.
Please correct me if I'm wrong. Sounds very interesting and I hope that people will finally fight against air pollution. Undoing it is not only healthier but also economically relevant. Sad that such studies seem to be necessary, but it's good that such revelations lead to more pressure for the policy makers.
The sad part really is that the pollution is more of a political and enforcement problem than a technological one. And none of the wonders of our technology will help us solve the "messy" problems that occur in a democracy of heterogeneous people (of India).
What do you mean? Basically the only reason India is one country is because the British ruled it as one country. It is about as culturally and linguistically diverse as all of Europe.
But to this article's authors, "intelligence" is increased by education, so harmful effects of pollution can be measured in years of education lost.
Is there a general cultural difference in how intelligence is thought of in China as opposed to the US?
Which is false.
You have a specific amount of neurons and a lot of them die every day. The body doesn't produce them like other cells after a certain age threshold (age 21 IIRC, also depends on the individual). - Although this theory is currently on the edge of being disproved, it's clear that adult brains are not producing many of them.
Training and experience can compensate this loss, but the general cognitive capacity gets reduced each day.
Pretty depressive to think about it, but maybe we'll be able to use stem cell research to change this in the future.
edit: I don't want to state this as definitive facts. The field of neurogenesis is currently heavily researched and there are some hints that adult brains might be able to produce new neurons. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-adult-br... for a discussion.
What I think is most likely is that we lose 10x times the amount of neurons that we create each day, so even if it's producing new ones, the rate of death is higher.
That said environment obviously does play some role, but that role is already a minority player and seems to be getting smaller as we learn more about genetics.
In this case, however, the statement you mention is technically correct. But one thing you have to account for is that 20% encompasses all environmental differences. Put another way, if we all had a 100% identical upbringing and environmental factors then the heritability of any given observation would obviously be 100%, since any deviations from the norm would be primarily due to genetic factors. So that means that all of the wild variations in our upbringings and backgrounds are constrained to as little as 20% of any variation in IQ.
What sort of an argument is this? You can lose an arm in an accident, does this mean you can also gain an arm?
That said, it's still not an excellent measure for basing predictions on, by the standards of "traditional" science. But if you don't put any weight in IQ, then there's nothing in the entire field that you should have any faith in.
I know it ruins some American Dream ideas, people with IQ below 80 are pretty much not employable, but that's just how it is. Some people have much harder time achieving things that others do with ease and we don't know any way to help them. For some reason people see it in a very different light than e.g. somebody having some disease that he has to organize his life around it or e.g. being paralyzed.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3950413/
edit: btw I love and highly recommend Brain That Changes Itself book, by Norman Doidge, but this is something different
We put way too much confidence into science in general. It's our God we don't question.
On the contrary, it's almost a definition of science that we question, challenge, and evolve it all the time.
According to this paper[0]:
the cognitive benefits of modafinil seem particularly marked in tests of vigilance and speed, in which sleepiness would be an important factor. Furthermore, the results indicate that high IQ may limit detection of modafinil's positive effects.
Edit: This might be interesting to you if you want some scientific literature. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroneuro.2015.07.028
Some references are welcome. Pure guess, but we do know that most society is sleep deprived and that sleep deprivation affects cognitive performance. As far as I understand it, modafinil can alleviate that.
I scored 123 at 8 or 9 on the weshler test, and 90 on the spatial visualization part. (that mean that around 60% of the european population was better than me at spatial visualization when i was a kid). However, i'm able to play blindchess and chart a course since i'm a teen, i was probably one of the best at understanding geometry/vectors in highschool and the only math course i wasn't bad at in college were topology and n-dimmension vectorized spaces. If i "blundered" the IQ test, i'm not aware of it (i know i wasn't very cooperative, but still). Maybe i misundertand what spatial vizualisation mean, but i don't think so.
Oh and also one part of the test was general knowledge, and i don't believe it can't be trained (like the puzzles/tangrams, symbol recognition or verbal expression tests).
If you're right, then it's reassuring for me since i feel like i'm more dumb on multiple subject than when i was a kid.
I guess it's more an expression of the point of view of the society, who doesn't care about persons, but about what they can bring to the enterprises. Education is formating workers, and if pollution makes you lose one year of education, that's a lot of money lost.
> If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number people would think you're mad
I wouldn’t think you’re mad. Many others wouldn’t either. Powerlifting competitions are already close to this. Take your performance across the four major lifts (benchpress, squat, shoulder press, deadlift) and devise a formula to combine it into a total number measuring the “general” strength of a person. You can compete on individual lifts, and if you break out that score some will be better than others at individual lifts, but the larger number remains indicative of well-rounded achievement in orthogonal areas.
That being said, I don’t think physical strength is comparable in any case.
> probably most people in the world would think the concept of "IQ" is mad, and yet, in some countries, so many people believe in it.
I think most people either “believe” in IQ or don’t think about it often enough to have an opinion. In fact skepticism about IQ is, in my experience, a distinct phenomeon on message boards and not at all representative of society in general.
Its consistently measured as a single number by the US military - it's just a combination of your performance on several exercises - traditionally pull ups, distance run times, swim times, number of crunches, etc.
So, again, fitness is consistently measured as a single number by one of the world's largest organizations. Don't postulate it's absurd. The same aggregation can be done for intelligence.
I'm not saying it's useless, but to me it is way overvaluated by some people. Maybe you can approximate intelligence with an IQ test, but the number itself is meaningless imho. The classification can be used though.
For individuals the results of IQ tests probably are oversold as you say given their noisiness. But for public health problems like air pollution where the results are averaged over populations they're probably undervalued if anything.
You don't need standardisation for IQ tests, because 100 will always be the mean. Get people to do your test, set the mean at 100 and you've got an IQ test.
>And IQ number is a comparison (you calculate the standard deviation). Also, even in clinical tests, multiple scales can be used
It measures deviation from the mean, and 15 points is used to show a standard deviation. This is how any clinical test will be administered.
>those tests don't mesure everything
Fantastic point. They ONLY measure intelligence.
>I'm not saying it's useless, but to me it is way overvaluated by some people. Maybe you can approximate intelligence with an IQ test, but the number itself is meaningless imho.
The problem with saying this is that IQ tests are far and away the best way of measuring intelligence. They do a pretty good job of it, as shown by their relative success in predicting outcomes. If you don't put any weight in IQ tests, then there's really nothing else you could rationally give any value to when it comes to measuring intelligence.
>but to me it is way overvaluated by some people
Personally, I think they're overvalued to the extent that intelligence in general is.
I’m also pretty skeptical that there’s a meaningful difference between what the modal person in the UK and US (respectively) believes about IQ. I could probably be persuaded, but I don’t see any reason to think your opinion has anything to do with your country or nationality.
If you draw any conclusions about what Americans are obsessed with from HN comments, you will almost always be wrong.
What!? Where can I get a hold of those drugs? :-)
There's no forcing the data to be single-dimensional regardless of the underlying truth about intelligence. People genuinely made an attempt to measure intelligence, and the measures people came up with happened to measure something best described as a single number.
Psychology researchers have tried to do the same with personality, and the principle component analysis spit out five dimensions rather than one. That's why the "Big 5" personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) are a thing.
In social science research there is often a tradeoff between measurement quality and sampling quality. Do you want to measure your variables really well in a small sample, or measure them crudely in a large sample.
Wouldn't it be honest to just accept the fact that both methods don't provide data that's relevant and trustworthy enough for the research at hand? It sound irresponsible to draw conclusions (that will be picked up by newspapers and eventually policy makers) based on data that does not merit them, only because no beter data is available.
My girlfreind is currently doing a doctorate psychology study, of which a small part is a standardised IQ test (though I dont know which standard; there are several). She asked if she could practice the process on me.
There are several sections, but to pick 2.
For language acuity, I scored OK. This section basically asked you to define a series of given words. Your knowledge here absolutely would change depending on your environment, job and education.
For pattern recognition, I scored fantastically. But I know this is because of years of studying geometry in math classes. I know exactly what my thought processes were, "Count the vertexs, count the edges, count the bisections, are some things odd, are some things even, do some things add together, do the shapes mirror once/twice, are they rotated". I know exactly where I picked those ideas up.
In the UK you can drop Maths and English/Creative Writing at 17. If you finish a pHD at 26 you havent regularly explored those ideas in near on 10 years, but you absolutely could still achieve it, so I do think its a better measure.
Then I am not sure if it is actually measuring intelligence.
Some attributes can be changed, some, on the other hand, not so much.
While I admittedly did not read the science paper, the newspaper indicates that they used test scores as the actual number, and the "cognitive drop equivalent to one year of education" phrase is just a way to explain the results, presumably anchored by how people in different school grades score in those tests.
Quoted from http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/27/against-individual-iq-w...
Ref [1] is https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-barry-kaufman/intellige...
So there's a high correlation, and it's much easier to measure than IQ.
I had a similar reaction when I read that line. I mean how does one correlate number of years of education to intelligence, which is already a somewhat abstract concept. That is like saying "If you wear this makeup, your partner will love you as if they were married to you twice as long"..
> Cutting annual mean concentration of particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10) in China to the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard (50 μg/m3) would move people from the median to the 63rd percentile (verbal test scores) and the 58th percentile (math test scores), respectively.
It seems like HEPA air purifiers should help quite a bit if one spends on a lot of time indoor. At least having one in the bedroom would reduce exposure time by at least one-third, which should be useful.
It also sounds like by investing modestly in air purifiers, most offices in polluted cities could even net productivity gains from healthier employees who suffer less from allergy and congested airways, in addition to long-term maintenance of their cognitive function.
Doesn't the production and usage of air purifiers contribute to air pollution over its entire product life cycle?
Don't production, usage and waste treatment of air purifiers contribute to air pollution over their entire product life cycle?
In the meantime, air purifiers reduce the extent that our health deteriorates. The effect of air purifiers production is relatively tiny compared to pollutants from the rest of the economy.
https://learn.allergyandair.com/houseplants-indoor-air-quali...
One minor trick I use when walking down the street is to rapidly exhale if I've breathed in a particularly bad volume of exhaust pollution, like concentrated diesel fumes, walking on a few paces before re-inhaling. I expect it takes ~1s to detect the bubble of bad air and the surrounding air is polluted too. So just mitigation.
That's already much better than what I had feared. Not perfect, of course, but better than the usual "corellation == causation" journalism.
Educated guess #2 - less pollution = better environment, country side and/or nature rich + less stress
Pollution control is on my mind constantly, and I hope we get a hold on pollution soon. But to be honest, the western media is after it a bit like how they were after Salt or Egg yokes earlier. I don't know why but the press constantly needs a target to pile everything on.
Since when is education equivalent to intelligence?
I thought that the current definition of intelligence is a relatively stable performance measure that is entirely independent of education (though it does predict academic performance).
[0]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/08/21/1809474115
https://sci-hub.tw/http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/08...
Once it became saturated, you'd obviously replace it, likely at an annual exhaust inspection.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0016236189... [2] https://university2.taylors.edu.my/EURECA/2014/downloads/46....
https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence
https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution
We have decades of data to show this positive correlation. Now I'm wondering how the study measured intelligence and of course who funded this study.
Edit: Seems like a lot of people are misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying air pollution is good. I think air pollution is bad. I'm just pointing out raw objective data which contradicts the study.
If air pollution causes reduction in intelligence, IQs would not have increased so much in the past 100 years as air pollution skyrocketed.
Can't say air pollution causes huge reduction in intelligence while IQs have drastically increased in an increasing air pollution environment.
The study claims a causal relationship - air pollution causes huge reduction in intelligence. The objective data of the last 100 years clearly shows that's not true.
The study tracked localized effects on individuals.
These are not necessarily in contradiction! Though whatever you're inferring with your broad correlation (air pollution has no negative effect on intelligence? air pollution improves intelligence?) is much weaker than the study, which clearly has made attempts to isolate variables.
When one increased the average education level by something like 5-10 years, as was the case in many Asian countries in the last century, it is not surprising there was a significant increase in intelligence. Thankfully the effect of pollution has not been drastic enough to negate all of those gains. It still does not mean we should neglect its likely significant negative impact.
From the paper:
> Cutting annual mean concentration of particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10) in China to the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard (50 μg/m3) would move people from the median to the 63rd percentile (verbal test scores) and the 58th percentile (math test scores), respectively.
Because industrialization is also positively correlated with pollution and urbanization, especially during its first phase, you would also expect to find a long-term positive correlation between pollution and intelligence.
However, if you factor out the positive effects of mass education, then you will likely find, as expected, that intelligence decreases as toxicity of the environment rises.