Air pollution can damage the brain, Chinese researchers find in far-reaching national study
Lead author says smog could have a bigger impact on social welfare than previously thought
Just as air pollution impairs the lungs and reduces life expectancy, it also seems to harm the brain and cognition skills, especially among the elderly, a group of Chinese researchers has found.
In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States on Monday, analysis of air quality readings and scores in nationwide maths and verbal tests suggests that exposure to air pollution impedes cognitive abilities.
The researchers came to the conclusions by comparing the results of 32,000 Chinese men and women who sat the China Family Panel Studies survey in 2010 and 2014. The survey comprises 24 standardised mathematics questions and 34 word-recognition questions, and was sat by people aged 25 years and above from 86 major cities and various rural areas across the country.
The survey’s data set included precise information about where and when the respondents took the tests, enabling the researchers to compare test scores with the official air pollution index in that area.
By comparing the scores from 2014 to those of 2010, the researchers found that the higher the concentration of pollutants, the sharper the declines in the test scores.
They found that both verbal and maths scores decreased with greater air pollution exposure, though verbal scores fell more than maths ones. The study also found that drops in verbal scores were more pronounced among males than females, with the gender gap greater among the less educated.
