Little Bobby-Jo and Billy-Sue not doing so well at their readin' and writin' these days? You might want to think about finding a house a little further from the interstate.
A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health has found that kids who grow up in neighbourhoods with lots of traffic pollution score lower in intelligence and memory tests than those who don't. Strong exposure to black carbon (a majpr particulate component of truck and car exhaust) is linked to an average 3.4 point drop in IQ, as well as poorer scores on memory and cognition tests. The effect is comparable to children who have been exposed to lead, or whose mothers smoked 10 cigarettes a day during pregnancy.
What's suprising is not that constant ingestion of brain-melting toxins can have an impact on a child's IQ, but that it took so long for someone to do a study that proves it. See - one more way that electric cars improve society.
No comments:
Post a Comment