The study looked at black and Dominican American children from inner New York
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
A study has revealed children growing up in inner cities have lower IQs due to exposure to industrial and household chemicals and one has to but wonder how much such a study, that simply confirmed what everyone new already, has, yet again, cost.
The study looked at children who were born to non-smoking black and Dominican American women age 18 to 35 from the deprived Washington Heights, Harlem or the South Bronx neighborhoods in New York.
The children were monitored from the womb through to the age of five with mothers wearing air monitoring equipment and answering questionnaires.
It found prenatal exposure to environmental pollutants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) can affect a child's intelligence quotient or IQ.
The findings are from new research by the US-based Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at the Mailman School of Public Health.
PAHs are chemicals released into the air from the burning of coal, diesel, oil and gas or other organic substances such as tobacco.
Without the fancy name given to the chemicals now it was known that inner city kids in areas where the heating was done by coal and the air high on pollution, like in London of old, did worse at school, in the main, than children from cleaner and better areas.
Environmental Protection Agency and several private foundations, found that children exposed to high levels of PAHs in New York City had full scale and verbal IQ scores that were 4.31 and 4.67 points lower, respectively than those of less exposed children.
"These findings are of concern because these decreases in IQ could be educationally meaningful in terms of school performance," says Frederica Perera, professor of environmental health sciences and director of the CCCEH and study lead author.
"The good news is that we have seen a decline in air pollution exposure in our cohort since 1998, testifying to the importance of policies to reduce traffic congestion and other sources of fossil fuel combustion by products."
The mothers wore personal air monitors during pregnancy to measure exposure
to PAHs and they responded to questionnaires
At five years of age, 249 children were given an intelligence test known as the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of the Intelligence, which provides verbal, performance and full-scale IQ scores.
Of these 140 children were classified as having had a 'high exposure' to pollution.
"The decrease in full-scale IQ score among the more exposed children is similar to that seen with low-level lead exposure," added Dr Perera.
"This finding is of concern because IQ is an important predictor of future academic performance, and PAHs are widespread in urban environments and throughout the world.
"Fortunately, airborne PAH concentrations can be reduced through currently available controls, alternative energy sources and policy interventions."
This proves what scientists have been saying for over a century by now, namely that our dependence on coal and oil, on fossil fuels, would turn and bite us, alone as regards to the pollution. One can but wonder what damage has been done to people and to future generations.
Lead always was another issue and this has been the case with many Gypsy children growing up on places such as the official Gypsy Site under the Westway in London and also other sites that were close to main roads.
All this should be reason enough for us to abandon the use of fossil fuel forthwith but no one is going to have the political will to do so and no politician the will to cut off the hand that feeds him.
© 2010
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