Education News – Grace Smith
“Children exposed to chronic air pollution are developing cognitive abilities more slowly than children who are breathing cleaner air, say researchers at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL)…the data came from a survey of over 2,000 children at 39 schools in Barcelona. The children, who ranged from ages 7 to 10, were surveyed every three months for one year…At each visit, the children were tested on cognitive skills such as working memory and attentiveness, both of which are known to grow at a steady pace during this age range. The ability to think of more than one thing at a time and the capacity to learn new concepts, as well as general intelligence, is described as working memory. For children who attended schools in areas with a high amount of pollution, improvement in these areas developed more slowly than those at schools with less air pollution…The findings suggest “that the developing brain may be vulnerable to traffic-related air pollution well into middle childhood,” or age 7 through age 10, the authors wrote, “a conclusion that has implications for the design of air pollution regulations and for the location of new schools.””(more)