NewScientist (1 September 2018) reports on pollution and the collective you:
An analysis that compared local air quality with cognitive test scores from nearly 32,000 students in China has found that a 17 per cent increase in measures of air pollution is linked to a 6 per cent decrease in verbal skills and a 2 per cent decrease in mathematics performance (PNAS, doi.org/ctc3).
Air pollution may damage the brain through several pathways at once, says Xiaobo Zhang at Peking University in Beijing, who was involved in the analysis. Other research has shown that pollutants in the air can carry toxins into the brain, decreased oxygen supply caused by pollution may impair cognitive functions, and prolonged exposure to unclean air can lead to neurological inflammation and disease.
While 2% may fall into the error bars, 6% may not. And this makes sense, since our brains evolved in a very different atmosphere. In fact, it’d be interesting to know if the higher percentage of CO2, relative to when we evolved our brains, is also having a deleterious effect on them as well.
