Could Reduced Air Pollution Make New Yorkers Smarter?
May 12
According to an article by the ClickGreen staff on Environmental News Network, “The study is the first to estimate the costs of IQ loss associated with exposure to air pollution, and is based on prior research on prenatal exposure to air pollutants among low-income children by Frederica Perera, PhD, lead author of the current study, and colleagues at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Mailman School of Public Health. The researchers made their calculation using a hypothesized modest reduction of .25 nanograms per cubic meter air (ng/m3) of ambient concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), a family of chemicals created by burning fossil fuels that is ubiquitous in urban air.”
The potential reduction of PAH by 25 percent is said to translate to the $215 million figure. Perera and colleagues said that they and their contemporaries have quite possibly overlooked the economic significance of reducing prenatal PAH exposure because it doesn’t include estimates of monetary gain or loss also associated with PAH like the overall neurotoxic, carcinogenic and respiratory effects.
And even though this study was done with children born to low-income New York moms on Medicaid, Perera and co-authors are confident that reduced PAH would affect all kids in a similar way. After all, IQ is heavily stressed in the math and science-centric curriculum of most American academic institutions.
Source: http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/47369
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