Breathing very polluted air would not only be toxic to the lungs, the heartWhere kidneys. It could also weaken our intellectual faculties. Researchers from Yale University (United States) and Peking University (China) pinpoint an unsuspected consequence of the atmospheric pollution on the brain.
In the specialist journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study concludes at a risk of decrease in intelligence quotient under the effect of exposure to nanoparticles.
For this work, carried out between 2010 and 2014, 20,000 Chinese participants were subjected to different levels of pollution before taking intellectual tests in mathematics and letters. The subjects most exposed to polluted air performed worse in maths and letters than those who breathed the least stale air.
The urgency of implementing concrete actions
Researchers estimate this intellectual loss at around a year of learning due to this polluted environment. The populations most at risk of seeing their cognitive abilities diminish are the elderly. Men are also more vulnerable than women, according to the authors.
“Governments really need to take concrete action to reduce air pollution. It’s all about human capital, which is one of the most important factors of economic growth “, explains Xi Chen, one of the authors of the study, quoted by AFP.
Each year 7 million people die from exposure to fine particles in polluted air, according to the World Health Organization.
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