IQ and Pollution
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Comment| Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 | Emily Halevy | CWK Producer |
“Short term, the air in the buses is cleaner when the windows are open. So, parents and school districts and bus drivers should know that weather permitting, it’s better to keep the windows open.”
– Howard Frumkin, Environmental and Occupational Health, Emory University
Every day during the school year, millions of kids ride a big yellow bus to school. With books in hand, these kids are on their way to class; but the irony is, the trip may be making them dumber.
It’s morning rush hour and on the way to school, millions of kids are breathing an hour or two of diesel exhaust.
“It smells like old gas,” says Adam, 17.
“It just smells like old tar. You know how they make tar on the roadwork? It really stinks very bad,” says Stevie, 17.
It doesn’t just smell bad. According to a study by the Harvard School of Public Health, heavy exposure to the black carbon in diesel exhaust can cause a 3 ½-point drop in a person’s IQ. Experts say school buses are one of the biggest culprits. So what should kids do?
“Short term, the air in the buses is cleaner when the windows are open. So, parents and school districts and bus drivers should know that weather permitting, it’s better to keep the windows open,” says Howard Frumkin, Environmental and Occupational Health, Emory University.
Frumkin also says bus drivers and parents should encourage kids to sit toward the front of the bus because exhaust fumes tend to collect in the back of the bus. Or, for some kids, it may be better to avoid the bus altogether.
“If a child can walk to school or bike to school rather than ride the bus, that’s terrific for lots of reasons: it’s good exercise for children, and our kids need exercise these days,” says Frumkin.
Tips for Parents
- Kids who live in neighborhoods with heavy traffic pollution have lower IQs and score worse on other tests of intelligence and memory than children who breathe cleaner air. (MSNBC)
- In studies, the effect of pollution on intelligence was similar to that seen in children whose mothers smoked ten cigarettes a day while pregnant, and/or in kids who have been exposed to lead, says Dr. Shakira Franco Suglia of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. (MSNBC)
- The more heavily children were exposed to black carbon, the lower their scores on several intelligence tests. (MSNBC)
References
- MSNBC
- Environmental and Occupational Health, Emory University
