It is interesting to me that they use years of education as a measure of intelligence. As an American I am more used to thinking of intelligence as an innate, almost fixed characteristic (IQ). In that view education increases knowledge and skills but isn't expected to much affect general intelligence.
But to this article's authors, "intelligence" is increased by education, so harmful effects of pollution can be measured in years of education lost.
Is there a general cultural difference in how intelligence is thought of in China as opposed to the US?
Are IQ tests truly generalized and accessible enough that education doesn’t affect one’s performance? Personally, I’ve been exposed to years of standardized testing in the educational system and developed skills specifically at taking tests.
But the point isn't to develop skill but see your brain natural talent of resolving complex problems, mastery of one own psychology is advantageous also.
Which is besides the point. Yes, having higher intelligence often means you'll benefit more from practice, but GP was asking of the tests were good enough that there's no practice benefit at all.
Yes, as a young kid I had an older sibling who was studying educational psychology so I spent a lot of time doing "intelligence" tests - I just thought they were interesting puzzles and didn't realise I was being continually tested.
It's both fixed and innate. Education can stretch it a little, but it benefits more high IQs than low IQs.
(It's fixed, but stretchable, and you can squeeze it, with stress, hunger, poverty, etc).
I'd like 20cc of study with that statement, given that brain plasticity can change radically the way your brain works all your life. Also, accidents can alter the brain and lower your IQ, so are you saying you can go down but not up ?
You have a specific amount of neurons and a lot of them die every day. The body doesn't produce them like other cells after a certain age threshold (age 21 IIRC, also depends on the individual). - Although this theory is currently on the edge of being disproved, it's clear that adult brains are not producing many of them.
Training and experience can compensate this loss, but the general cognitive capacity gets reduced each day.
Pretty depressive to think about it, but maybe we'll be able to use stem cell research to change this in the future.
edit: I don't want to state this as definitive facts. The field of neurogenesis is currently heavily researched and there are some hints that adult brains might be able to produce new neurons. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-adult-br... for a discussion.
What I think is most likely is that we lose 10x times the amount of neurons that we create each day, so even if it's producing new ones, the rate of death is higher.
Heritability of IQ is the term you're looking for. Wiki has a page on it here [1]. The numbers have not been pinned down and it was previously thought to be as low as 57%, but recent studies tend to show heritability rates upwards of 80%. There are a lot of complex issues that make study difficult. For instance there's the paradoxical issue that childhood IQ can be somewhat meaningfully influenced by environment, yet that notwithstanding, as children approach adolescence and especially adulthood their IQ becomes ever more a product of genetics.
That said environment obviously does play some role, but that role is already a minority player and seems to be getting smaller as we learn more about genetics.
From the article: "Heritability measures the proportion of variation in a trait that can be attributed to genes, and not the proportion of a trait caused by genes." If e.g. schools get better, and the whole population would have access to these better schools, everyone would be more intelligent, yet the heritability would still be at 80%.
You've gotta be careful with Wiki at times. In that same paragraph you'll also see the sentence "Contrary to popular[citation needed] belief, two parents of higher IQ will not necessarily produce offspring of equal or higher intelligence. In fact, according to the concept of regression toward the mean, parents whose IQ is at either extreme are more likely to produce offspring with IQ closer to the mean (or average)." That literally made me laugh. Whoever wrote that has no absolutely clue what regression towards the mean is or means, yet felt qualified to write on it. The reason Wiki is useful is as a collection of sources to meaningful information and statistics. But much of what is written by Wikipedia editors themselves is often very bad, and exponentially more so when you enter into any area that could be in any way controversial -- which includes this topic. It should be taken with a grain of salt.
In this case, however, the statement you mention is technically correct. But one thing you have to account for is that 20% encompasses all environmental differences. Put another way, if we all had a 100% identical upbringing and environmental factors then the heritability of any given observation would obviously be 100%, since any deviations from the norm would be primarily due to genetic factors. So that means that all of the wild variations in our upbringings and backgrounds are constrained to as little as 20% of any variation in IQ.
If there's one thing in the field of psychology that is actually science, it's IQ tests. Empirically, IQ has been shown to not change much at all over time, and is the single most reliable factor for predicting outcomes that psychology has ever produced. The big 5 personality model is the next best tool psychologists have, but it's not nearly as reliable as IQ.
That said, it's still not an excellent measure for basing predictions on, by the standards of "traditional" science. But if you don't put any weight in IQ, then there's nothing in the entire field that you should have any faith in.
It is (at least after a certain young age). There's been a lot of research around this because the incentive is huge. Military has spent quite a bit of money on that too (IARPA). So far, science tells us that it is fixed. I mean, you can lower it with some brain injuries but you pretty much cannot increase it[1].
I know it ruins some American Dream ideas, people with IQ below 80 are pretty much not employable, but that's just how it is. Some people have much harder time achieving things that others do with ease and we don't know any way to help them. For some reason people see it in a very different light than e.g. somebody having some disease that he has to organize his life around it or e.g. being paralyzed.
I don't believe in that science. The brain can learn how to approach problems more efficiently, how to break them down, how to think in the way these IQ tests are designed.
We put way too much confidence into science in general. It's our God we don't question.
Sometimes this is true of the scientists but not the general populous, they can tend to hold onto ideas that were once accepted science and turned out inaccurate.
the cognitive benefits of modafinil seem particularly marked in tests of vigilance and speed, in which sleepiness would be an important factor. Furthermore, the results indicate that high IQ may limit detection of modafinil's positive effects.
Unfortunately no, I don't have any concrete evidence on that point, just some amount of anecdata from people who are "nootropic" enthusiasts that I found convincing enough.
Give them the test one more time after modafinil wears off and they score even higher ;)
Some references are welcome. Pure guess, but we do know that most society is sleep deprived and that sleep deprivation affects cognitive performance. As far as I understand it, modafinil can alleviate that.
That may be what was happening --It makes me wonder, if we say that someones higher baseline intelligence is hidden behind some semi-permanent condition like chronic inflammation or poor sleep patterns, is that really their baseline? How many other factors may be "artificially" decreasing someones measurable general intelligence for most or all of their life?
I'm not sure about this, but i have no study, only anecdot.
I scored 123 at 8 or 9 on the weshler test, and 90 on the spatial visualization part. (that mean that around 60% of the european population was better than me at spatial visualization when i was a kid). However, i'm able to play blindchess and chart a course since i'm a teen, i was probably one of the best at understanding geometry/vectors in highschool and the only math course i wasn't bad at in college were topology and n-dimmension vectorized spaces. If i "blundered" the IQ test, i'm not aware of it (i know i wasn't very cooperative, but still). Maybe i misundertand what spatial vizualisation mean, but i don't think so.
Oh and also one part of the test was general knowledge, and i don't believe it can't be trained (like the puzzles/tangrams, symbol recognition or verbal expression tests).
If you're right, then it's reassuring for me since i feel like i'm more dumb on multiple subject than when i was a kid.
I guess it's more an expression of the point of view of the society, who doesn't care about persons, but about what they can bring to the enterprises. Education is formating workers, and if pollution makes you lose one year of education, that's a lot of money lost.
I must admit that from perspective of the someone from the UK I've never really understood the US obsession with the desire to represent intelligence as a single number.
It's an interesting phenomenon, perhaps worthy of study by propagandists or advertisers. If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number people would think you're mad, and probably most people in the world would think the concept of "IQ" is mad, and yet, in some countries, so many people believe in it.
> If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number people would think you're mad
I wouldn’t think you’re mad. Many others wouldn’t either. Powerlifting competitions are already close to this. Take your performance across the four major lifts (benchpress, squat, shoulder press, deadlift) and devise a formula to combine it into a total number measuring the “general” strength of a person. You can compete on individual lifts, and if you break out that score some will be better than others at individual lifts, but the larger number remains indicative of well-rounded achievement in orthogonal areas.
That being said, I don’t think physical strength is comparable in any case.
> probably most people in the world would think the concept of "IQ" is mad, and yet, in some countries, so many people believe in it.
I think most people either “believe” in IQ or don’t think about it often enough to have an opinion. In fact skepticism about IQ is, in my experience, a distinct phenomeon on message boards and not at all representative of society in general.
"If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number"
Its consistently measured as a single number by the US military - it's just a combination of your performance on several exercises - traditionally pull ups, distance run times, swim times, number of crunches, etc.
So, again, fitness is consistently measured as a single number by one of the world's largest organizations. Don't postulate it's absurd. The same aggregation can be done for intelligence.
Yes, you can do that: you aggregate the results from some arbitrary tests, using some arbitrary weights, and out comes an arbitrary number. The trick must be to give that number a catchy name, so that people think it's something highly meaningful, almost akin to mass, distance or time.
Fluid and crystallized intelligence (which is what IQ test measure) are the most robust ways of measuring intelligence, and IQ is the single most reliable metric ever discovered in psychology, in terms of making predictions. If you're interesting in measuring how smart somebody is, there's no better way of doing it than with that single number.
I assume it’s exactly for this same reason there’s an archetype of an incredibly intelligent person, who ends up with a cocaine addiction, because he was never understood...
Which IQ test? IQ as a number alone mean nothing, as you can't make a standardized test for it. And IQ number is a comparison (you calculate the standard deviation). Also, even in clinical tests, multiple scales can be used, and this mesure evolve. And there is no "single number", multple subjects are tested, and now we have another limitation: those tests don't mesure everything, or mesure thing that can evolve. I "scored" 123 on the weshler when i was 8 (or 9) with a really bad spatial visualisation score of 90 (89?). Since i'm now able to play blindchess or to chart a course on a marine map, either my spatial visualisation skills have improved, either people i know hide a lot. And i'm sure i would score way less on the other subjects too, looking back i was a pretty interesting kid, while now i'm an average adult.
I'm not saying it's useless, but to me it is way overvaluated by some people.
Maybe you can approximate intelligence with an IQ test, but the number itself is meaningless imho. The classification can be used though.
The hypothetical g which IQ tests are trying to find is the extent to which every test of mental abilities that anyone has ever devised plus some things like reflex speed all seem to be fairly strongly correlated with each other and all seem to be correlated via a common factor. You can certainly be more skilled at one test than another. These tests are also fairly noisy when applied to individuals.
For individuals the results of IQ tests probably are oversold as you say given their noisiness. But for public health problems like air pollution where the results are averaged over populations they're probably undervalued if anything.
>IQ as a number alone mean nothing, as you can't make a standardized test for it
You don't need standardisation for IQ tests, because 100 will always be the mean. Get people to do your test, set the mean at 100 and you've got an IQ test.
>And IQ number is a comparison (you calculate the standard deviation). Also, even in clinical tests, multiple scales can be used
It measures deviation from the mean, and 15 points is used to show a standard deviation. This is how any clinical test will be administered.
>those tests don't mesure everything
Fantastic point. They ONLY measure intelligence.
>I'm not saying it's useless, but to me it is way overvaluated by some people. Maybe you can approximate intelligence with an IQ test, but the number itself is meaningless imho.
The problem with saying this is that IQ tests are far and away the best way of measuring intelligence. They do a pretty good job of it, as shown by their relative success in predicting outcomes. If you don't put any weight in IQ tests, then there's really nothing else you could rationally give any value to when it comes to measuring intelligence.
>but to me it is way overvaluated by some people
Personally, I think they're overvalued to the extent that intelligence in general is.
“Obsession” is not the right word. I don’t think most Americans have an opinion on it (and they generally shouldn’t unless they’re psychologists or willing to do a lot of personal research on the subject).
I’m also pretty skeptical that there’s a meaningful difference between what the modal person in the UK and US (respectively) believes about IQ. I could probably be persuaded, but I don’t see any reason to think your opinion has anything to do with your country or nationality.
Yes, I realised I was over generalising as soon as I made that comment - I was mostly (over)reacting to the parent comment that did imply that it was a part of American culture.
It's definitely useful but with caveats. Your measurable iq isn't constant, people can have impairments that lower it temporarily and there are also certain drugs that can raise test scores.
> It's definitely useful but with caveats. Your measurable iq isn't constant, people can have impairments that lower it temporarily and there are also certain drugs that can raise test scores.
I don't recommend naively swallowing pill cocktails in pursuit of IQ test scores, but informally people have taken stimulants and anti-narcolepsy drugs and gotten better scores, doing a reasonable job controlling for other factors.
It's typically referred to as "general intelligence," or "g," and the reason this single value is significant is because of the strong correlations it has with other life outcomes. I don't think anyone claims it represents all intelligence, and presumably we could come up for numbers regarding other aspects of intelligence. It's just the best number we've got so far for what people are trying to measure.
IQ is a single number for a very good reason. If you take all the questions psychology researchers have come up with to try to measure intelligence, take the pass/fail statistics of test-takers on them, and run a principle component analysis on it, you wind up with a single dimension.
There's no forcing the data to be single-dimensional regardless of the underlying truth about intelligence. People genuinely made an attempt to measure intelligence, and the measures people came up with happened to measure something best described as a single number.
Psychology researchers have tried to do the same with personality, and the principle component analysis spit out five dimensions rather than one. That's why the "Big 5" personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) are a thing.
Most psychologists wouldn't operationalize intelligence as years of schooling but its common practice in economics and some other fields.
In social science research there is often a tradeoff between measurement quality and sampling quality. Do you want to measure your variables really well in a small sample, or measure them crudely in a large sample.
> In social science research there is often a tradeoff between measurement quality and sampling quality. Do you want to measure your variables really well in a small sample, or measure them crudely in a large sample.
Wouldn't it be honest to just accept the fact that both methods don't provide data that's relevant and trustworthy enough for the research at hand? It sound irresponsible to draw conclusions (that will be picked up by newspapers and eventually policy makers) based on data that does not merit them, only because no beter data is available.
IQ tests are not generalised measures of innate intelligence at all and your IQ absolutely increases with education.
My girlfreind is currently doing a doctorate psychology study, of which a small part is a standardised IQ test (though I dont know which standard; there are several). She asked if she could practice the process on me.
There are several sections, but to pick 2.
For language acuity, I scored OK. This section basically asked you to define a series of given words. Your knowledge here absolutely would change depending on your environment, job and education.
For pattern recognition, I scored fantastically. But I know this is because of years of studying geometry in math classes. I know exactly what my thought processes were, "Count the vertexs, count the edges, count the bisections, are some things odd, are some things even, do some things add together, do the shapes mirror once/twice, are they rotated". I know exactly where I picked those ideas up.
In the UK you can drop Maths and English/Creative Writing at 17. If you finish a pHD at 26 you havent regularly explored those ideas in near on 10 years, but you absolutely could still achieve it, so I do think its a better measure.
Only if you want "intelligence" to be a fixed characteristic of a person. Which would be a strange requirement, since other characteristics can and do change a lot, especially with a targeted effort to change them.
"The new work [...] analysed language and arithmetic tests conducted as part of the China Family Panel Studies on 20,000 people across the nation between 2010 and 2014. The scientists compared the test results with records of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide pollution."
While I admittedly did not read the science paper, the newspaper indicates that they used test scores as the actual number, and the "cognitive drop equivalent to one year of education" phrase is just a way to explain the results, presumably anchored by how people in different school grades score in those tests.
> First, on a population level IQ is very stable with age. Over a study of 87,498 Scottish children, age 11 IQ and adult IQ correlated at 0.66 [1], about as strong and impressive a correlation as you’ll ever find in the social sciences. But “correlation of 0.66” is also known as “only predicts 44% of the variance”. On an individual level, it is totally possible and not even that surprising to have an IQ of 100 at age 11 but 120 at age 30, or vice versa. Any IQ score you got before high school should be considered a plausible prediction about your adult IQ and nothing more.
I think the thinking is that getting many years of education is desirable for almost everybody (it generally leads to better careers later in life, etc), but that only those who possess sufficient intelligence get the chance to pursue higher education.
So there's a high correlation, and it's much easier to measure than IQ.
> It is interesting to me that they use years of education as a measure of intelligence.
I had a similar reaction when I read that line. I mean how does one correlate number of years of education to intelligence, which is already a somewhat abstract concept. That is like saying "If you wear this makeup, your partner will love you as if they were married to you twice as long"..
I read the abstract - supposedly they are aware of, and try to eliminate correlation, but I am unconvinced: We know that maintenance keeps intelligence from declining, could be what's happening here.
> The study followed the same individuals as air pollution varied from one year to the next, meaning that many other possible causal factors such as genetic differences are automatically accounted for.
That's already much better than what I had feared. Not perfect, of course, but better than the usual "corellation == causation" journalism.
This is no surprise to people who have lived in Salt Lake City. During the winter, as a consequence of inversion (pollutants being trapped in the mountain basin), it becomes the most polluted city in North America. During this time, resident IQs also drop. [0]
Do they perform on the normal level after the pollution? That would be a hint that the results of the IQ tests just temporarily drop (I would be careful to say that the intelligence dropped).
If people leave the polluted area, they'll restore their normal intelligence. When I hear "reduction in intelligence", I immediately think that they talk about permanent reduction (because a big part of fluid intelligence is genetics, the efficiency of synapses and the amount of neurons - although some research [1] indicates that nurture and training can have significant effects on fluid intelligence).
It's unclear if they talk about permanent and irreversible damage IMO. For me it seems like they want to frame it that way which could be a bit clickbait-y depending on the matter of facts.
First, in general, air pollution inhibits respondents
’
test
performance. Except for the effects of 1-d and 7-d air pollution
exposure on math test scores (first and second columns in panel
B), all of the coefficients for mean APIs over a longer period are
negative and statistically significant.
Second, the damage of air
pollution on cognitive performance is more sizable when using
longer window of exposure measure. As shown at the bottom in
panel A, an increase in the 7-d-mean API by 1 SD lowers verbal
test scores by 0.278 point (0.026 SD), while a 1 SD increase in
average API over 3 y before the interview is associated with 1.132
points (0.108 SD) drop in verbal test scores.
Third, air pollution
exposure appears to exert a more negative effect on verbal test
performance than math test performance.
That doesn't imply that the effect is irreversible, but it does mean that there are long-term changes which accumulate with longer exposure to air pollution.
Thanks. If air pollution decreases cognitive capacity in the short term, it's clear that learning efforts have a lower return on investment for that period of time. This means it directly affects parts of the crystallized intelligence. It's like a temporary learning disorder which inhibits neurogenesis and decreases working memory.
Please correct me if I'm wrong. Sounds very interesting and I hope that people will finally fight against air pollution. Undoing it is not only healthier but also economically relevant. Sad that such studies seem to be necessary, but it's good that such revelations lead to more pressure for the policy makers.
A plausible mechanism would be that cold weather causes people to spend time indoors with the windows closed, leading to more CO2 buildup, leading to IQ declines. Indoor CO2 buildups of, say, 1000 ppm aren't uncommon and lead to a clear decline in cognitive functions. This wouldn't be a problem in hot countries.
There was a recent large scale study that claims PM2.5 levels present in cities have a significant effect on healthy children's lung capacity, that by the age of eight children who live within 100 meters of a busy street have a 6% reduction in lung capacity compared to those who don't. Now this study. Jeesh.
I am particular interested in these studies because my family lives in a very clean rural mountainous area in Thailand and my son is attending a pretty good international school here. But I am considering moving him to a bigger and better school in Bangkok - a dirty, polluted, congested city. If this study is true then am I really gaining anything? The difficult tradeoff was health impact for improved educational opportunity. But if the pollution equates to a one year loss of education then maybe there is little to no gain.
Neglecting the air quality etc., is there any specific reason to believe you would gain anything by moving your son to another school at this age?
Personally, I think that a much better move is to stay where you are and instead save up to fund a one-year exchange to a prestigious international university when he's been at some national university for a couple of years. AFAIK many prestigious universities accept almost an unlimited number of international exchange students, as long as they can pay the tuition fees.
First issue with the school is the quality of classmates. It is a small school with small classes, which is good, right? Except there are only six students in his class this year and his classmates are generally low achievers, poor English speakers, and pretty lousy friends. I want him to be surrounded by high achievers and have some choices when it comes to friends. Seems unlikely that will ever happen at this school.
Second issue is that the school is pretty stagnant. At a time when international schools in Thailand are booming, adding new campuses and programs every year, this school is just plodding along with its old tired facilities and pathetic extracurricular offerings. I've been trying to make up for that with lots of after school activities like having our own little Maker Space, doing robotics, and visiting the museums and children's activity centers in Thailand which are very good. But he doesn't get to do that stuff with kids his age because of issue number one.
I was a volunteer judge earlier this year at a robotics competition held at one of the international schools in Bangkok. I got to see what a number of schools are doing and it is pretty impressive. One of the schools I particularly like has a STEM program in association with MIT, and a performing arts program in association with Juilliard. They are also introducing robotics into the primary curriculumn this year. Impressive stuff.
I'm planning to do as you suggested but that is still a number of years away. Need to figure out what I'm going to do near term. And moving to Bangkok just seems so painful.
Ok, enough of this long winded personal issues rant.
A general idea could be to get your son to participate in a local university, if it is a good one, or take him to events/summer programs in a top university in another province for a few months each year.
Since your son is likely very good with English already, it might not be necessary for him to continue studying in an international school (I understand there are trade-offs). It might be worth it if he moves to a top local school, where more high achievers study instead.
For something more specific, I think I might be of some help. Please send me an email (in my profile) if you'd like.
I have a lot of experience tutoring math in small classes to many students, including a couple who went on to earn gold medals in International Physics and Chemistry Olympiads. (I no longer teach due to my current research and startup work.)
I'd say your child would gain much more from having good private tutors you hand-pick from local schools/universities/private tutoring centers (depending on the level of your son's attainment and the qualifications of the teachers). Also, for certain subjects, you could be a great teacher yourself.
Even without taking pollution impact into account, using the hours saved from commuting in a very congested city to study one-on-one or in a small group would likely net a bigger gain than what quality difference there is between the good local school and a top school in the capital city. The key conditions are 1) having qualified tutors who fit with the student's personality and interests and 2) regular schedule so the student does not spend the extra hours playing mobile games instead.
Another key advantage is your child can use the best educational materials available on the Web, paid and free, such as Khan Academy, 3Blue1Brown, and the likes for learning. The presentations there are often head-and-shoulders above the techniques most school teachers typically use to explain concepts in class.
Edit: For a downvoter who I assume might disagree with the last paragraph, you need to go visit average schools in a developing country to see how the teaching is like.
I am glad to read your suggestions, coming from someone with experience. And indeed I have been doing some of this. The teachers at his school are very good. It's other issues that I'm not satisfied with (detailed in my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17867556). I do teach him a lot. I'm an EE and can write code. So I have had him do a bunch of code.org, robotics projects, maker projects, and we do lots of reading together. He's strong in those areas. Currently do tutoring only in Chinese and music. And yes, he has pretty strict limits on game playing time. So maybe I should stay the course as you suggest, supplementing as needed.
Keep in mind that one good thing about air pollution is it’s relatively straightforward to mitigate once you’re aware of the problem. PM2.5 filters can be had for relatively cheap (see Smart Air), and you can wear a mask when you’re out on bad days. Unless you’re really lucky, his peers in Bangkok probably won’t make him feel great about wearing a mask, but just having clean air at home will help a lot. Then maybe you can talk the school into filters, plus policies about athletics on bad days. I’d be surprised if they don’t have these already.
What you describe sounds great, just one remark - I hope you are also allowing him to just be a child, play outside, wander around, do foolish things, have fun with peers etc. Without these, a child doesn't have a proper childhood and effects will be felt negatively for the rest of the life.
> Chen said air pollution was most likely to be the cause of the loss of intelligence, rather than simply being a correlation.
Why? You can't just say that and expect people to trust you. The fact that they followed the same people may reduce the chances of certain DNA traits having an effect but how does that rule out other commonalities in environmental conditions. If you're in a polluted city it seems likely that you're in a large city. So do all the common traits of a large city also reduce your intelligence?
I want to read the study but I don't want to subscribe. If there is logical proof in the study that this is not simply a correlation, the guardian piece does not represent it.
London is really not that polluted. It rains too much to be very polluted. AQI is currently 88 in the worst areas. In China many cities are often 150-200 range. India is off the charts, my friend who makes commercial air quality sensor arrays said most sensor tech maxes out way below ambient Indian levels and readings cannot therefore be trusted - nobody knows how bad it is.
That’s vastly insufficient as far as empirical evidence is concerned. There are many things that coincide with pollution, which is what the commenter is saying. You need to demonstrate how you picked out pollution from everything comingled with it. That’s what’s being asked about here.
EDIT: Disregard this stuffy reply, my humor detector was off.
The response was tongue-in-cheek: the commenter implied that the article was insufficient due to the journalist being less intelligent due to living in a polluted city.
You make an excellent point. How do they rule out other leading causes of the loss of intelligence?
There have been studies that show high amounts of road traffic cause increased secretions of a certain enzyme into the frontal cortex, causing high levels of stress and increased memory loss.
What's really amazing to me is when you realise that the UK executive and legislative branches are based in London. MPs, Lords, and often their partners and children are all living and working in an extremely polluted environment for years on end. Even so, with the knowledge that they are seriously harming their own health and the health of their closest relatives, they persist in resisting and blocking attempts at actions to improve air quality in London.
Whenever somebody defends the quality of democratic representation in the UK, I just remind myself that these are people who would rather they and their own children suffered illness and premature death than take action that might piss off business and motorist lobbying groups.
I think you're overthinking this a bit. I don't think politicians prefer seeing their children suffering illness and premature death rather than pissing off lobbies. The real problem is that most people see the results of studies like this as something abstract, not as something that affects them directly. It's clearly visible with smokers: it's not that they are especially tolerant of dying a horrible death from lung cancer or a stroke (no one is), it's mostly that they don't really think it will happen to them (yes, I know it might be an imperfect analogy because physiological addiction also factors in... but I also know a smoker that found quitting "physically impossible" until he had a stroke, and survived. Once he had saw death's face, and the risk turned from abstract to very concrete, he quit smoking overnight).
It doesn't help that studies like this are also usually wrong. Don't change anything in your life until something has been replicated a dozen or more times.
Or maybe take the information as a sign that perhaps caution is warranted in some areas and it might be worthwhile to consider how you might change your behaviors based on the evidence.
I agree that scientific conclusions are sometime editorialized to convey the pressing nature of the findings (the evidence is what it is), but 100% wrong or 100% right I don't think it would do you much harm to reduce the amount of pollution you're exposed to on a daily basis.
There's a Pascal's wager in this situation. In the worst case, there's no cognitive effect from pollution, but you clean up the environment anyway. Even without the possibility of improving your ability to reason, there are many other obvious benefits to reducing pollution, quitting smoking, and many other major changes about which the effects have been debated and exaggerated over time.
> There's a Pascal's wager in this situation. In the worst case, there's no cognitive effect from pollution, but you clean up the environment anyway.
And, as with Pascal's wager, that's unconvincing: one could spend all that money differently, on things one would like (just as in Pascal's wager, choosing to believe in God isn't cost-free: it means loving others, being charitable &c., even if one would rather not).
The worst case is that there is a positive effect from pollution. When one looks at the historic data it wasn't until people started living in smog filled cities that children started attending schools.
We shouldn't fall into the trap of assuming causation and correlation just because it gels with something in your subconscious.
I think we can be pretty confident that air pollution is bad for your health, even if some effects in the constellation of health issues attributed to it are not as strong as claimed.
> it's not that they are especially tolerant of dying a horrible death from lung cancer or a stroke (no one is), it's mostly that they don't really think it will happen to them...
Which is true most of the time..
I mean, people getting into an automobile for no good reason also thinks that they won't be the one that would end up dying or maimed in an accident. I mean, aren't we all guilty or dumb in that way?
> it's not that they are especially tolerant of dying a horrible death from lung cancer or a stroke (no one is), it's mostly that they don't really think it will happen to them
That, or perhaps something even more sinister: they'd rather enjoy a 5 minute cigarette respite from life than live without that respite.
Lawmakers, too, have hellish lives. Turn a blind eye to stuff that doesn't matter here and how, and instead focus on getting whatever will better they and their families.
> somebody defends the quality of democratic representation in the UK
Does anyone do that any more? I thought most were in broad agreement that UK has one of the less representative democracies. We also have one of the most centralised democracies - local government has a tiny fraction of the power and proportion of budget that it had 50 years ago.
Couldn't you also argue that (and I appreciate there are exceptions to every rule) more gets done, with more efficiency, when everyone is together in one place? Certainly when reading body language, micro actions and the "feeling in the room" is important and video calling doesn't cut it. So they end up in one place. You could move that place to somewhere with great air, but because it's a centre of importance and a community of people is needed to support it, within X number of years enough of a city will have built up causing the same kinds of pollution and you're back in square 1?
London isn't bad. China is the extreme case of this. Beijing air pollution is often at "cyberpunk dystopia" levels, and Beijing is where most of China's leadership resides. You can't say they're not experiencing the effects of their environmental policies.
London is bad compared to many other western cities. It's significantly worse than New York, for example. Levels of pollutants like NOx and PM regularly exceed legal limits.
London's bad enough that you can see and taste the change in air roughly when you reach Hendon on the M1, that it leaves clothes and person dirtier, and generally feels unpleasant like sitting in a room full of smokers. Bad enough to want to avoid it.
Which makes reading of cities around the world where it's significantly worse that much gloomier.
Why would you conclude that all those MPs and Lords also live in London? Most likely they live somewhere much nicer and have a driver getting them to 'work' once a month.
*Once a month on the assumption that most sessions are only attended by a handful of MPs.
On the other hand I once heard that the rich in Germany (in some places at least) have worse air quality than the poor, because the rich all have got their fireplaces going (how ironic is that?-)
> Once a month on the assumption that most sessions are only attended by a handful of MPs.
Most sessions of the House are attended by a handful of MPs, because no real work is happening there. Meaningful debate in the House is rare, and the results of divisions (votes) are usually known ahead of time. And in any case a debate is not a good way to write any kind of document, so any MP actually wanting to make a difference is doing so in committees, which are not seen on TV nearly as often, but are pretty well attended from my quick scan of attendance records.
No, when it's in session Parliament is pretty much a full day's job for an MP, probably more if you're actually trying to do good work and/or have a cabinet or shadow cabinet post. Remember in the UK the executive is run by ordinary people elected to the legislature, they aren't just arbitrarily picked by a President, although in some roles it will be tolerated to "elevate" outsiders to the House of Lords and then give them a minor cabinet post, doing this with a Great Office would cause outrage in the modern era, those are always given to elected MPs. Because the Prime Minister can change in days (or in practice hours) an entire parallel Shadow cabinet also needs to exist for a party that would seek government, with no power today but every capability to take over political control of government tomorrow if called to.
My local MP commutes, less than two hours each way - gets the same train home I was catching after visiting the (London) office, so leaving London just after 1900 on a weekday, to obviously the same city I live in on the coast.
Those who live further away have flats in London, they stay for four nights a week and go home at weekends. Indeed some of the last train services heading North on a Friday are almost explicitly for such MPs and staff. Kings Cross to Edinburgh on a Friday evening is not exactly a tourist route, it won't get there until after midnight.
Using an official car would be an unacceptable expense except for certain senior ministers (who work in London all the time, e.g. the Prime Minister and often senior cabinet ministers live there) and it's frowned on even then, one of the few good things you can say about Boris (Johnson, the city's previous mayor) is that he rode a bicycle a lot rather than constantly getting official cars just a few miles up the road.
Lords get paid £305 per day they turn up to Parliament when it's in session, with no further allowances except for travel expenses (so pay for their own staff).
They generally do turn up.
MPs are also often around, even if they are not in the Commons chamber. They are generally aware of proceedings in the chamber, and come in when there is a vote that is relevant.
"MPs, Lords, and often their partners and children are all living and working in an extremely polluted environment for years on end."
I don't think it's common for MPs to bring their families to London for "years on end". Most MPs will have a flat they use when in London (probably in a nice building with HVAC, well away from the most polluted roads and neighbourhoods). But they will typically maintain their main residence in/near their home constituencies.
Likewise for the Lords. Most of them commute and don't spend all that much time in London.
One minor trick I use when walking down the street is to rapidly exhale if I've breathed in a particularly bad volume of exhaust pollution, like concentrated diesel fumes, walking on a few paces before re-inhaling. I expect it takes ~1s to detect the bubble of bad air and the surrounding air is polluted too. So just mitigation.
Resort to air filtering machinery. You can buy a HEPA filter for $100-200. If you drive much, buy a HEPA cabin air filter for your car (https://www.boschautoparts.com/en/auto/filters/hepa-cabin-fi...). Your exposure to particulates while driving is many times higher than while at home.
We have decades of data to show this positive correlation. Now I'm wondering how the study measured intelligence and of course who funded this study.
Edit: Seems like a lot of people are misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying air pollution is good. I think air pollution is bad. I'm just pointing out raw objective data which contradicts the study.
Sure. The objective data I provided shows a correlation and not a causation. But it contradicts the study of a "huge" reduction in intelligence due to air pollution.
If air pollution causes reduction in intelligence, IQs would not have increased so much in the past 100 years as air pollution skyrocketed.
Can't say air pollution causes huge reduction in intelligence while IQs have drastically increased in an increasing air pollution environment.
The study claims a causal relationship - air pollution causes huge reduction in intelligence. The objective data of the last 100 years clearly shows that's not true.
You have shared two sources of broad, country-level data.
The study tracked localized effects on individuals.
These are not necessarily in contradiction! Though whatever you're inferring with your broad correlation (air pollution has no negative effect on intelligence? air pollution improves intelligence?) is much weaker than the study, which clearly has made attempts to isolate variables.
Have you considered that the educational level in the developing world has increased dramatically from a low base, while pollution had so far been manageable in most cities until the most recent couple of decades?
When one increased the average education level by something like 5-10 years, as was the case in many Asian countries in the last century, it is not surprising there was a significant increase in intelligence. Thankfully the effect of pollution has not been drastic enough to negate all of those gains. It still does not mean we should neglect its likely significant negative impact.
From the paper:
> Cutting annual mean concentration of particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10) in China to the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard (50 μg/m3) would move people from the median to the 63rd percentile (verbal test scores) and the 58th percentile (math test scores), respectively.
Really, your criticism of a study looking at those two factors in local detail and trying to correct for correlation with outside factors is "but globally they correlate"? (and also correlate with everything that's on a long-term upwards trend when nations are developing/industrializing)
Over the last two centuries, you would expect to find a direct causal link between industrialization and intelligence, as governments have introduced mass education for the first time, to create a skilled labour force.
Because industrialization is also positively correlated with pollution and urbanization, especially during its first phase, you would also expect to find a long-term positive correlation between pollution and intelligence.
However, if you factor out the positive effects of mass education, then you will likely find, as expected, that intelligence decreases as toxicity of the environment rises.
> Cutting annual mean concentration of particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10) in China to the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard (50 μg/m3) would move people from the median to the 63rd percentile (verbal test scores) and the 58th percentile (math test scores), respectively.
It seems like HEPA air purifiers should help quite a bit if one spends on a lot of time indoor. At least having one in the bedroom would reduce exposure time by at least one-third, which should be useful.
It also sounds like by investing modestly in air purifiers, most offices in polluted cities could even net productivity gains from healthier employees who suffer less from allergy and congested airways, in addition to long-term maintenance of their cognitive function.
That is an ideal situation most of us do not have much influence on. We can help lobby/advocate at the margin but check out who we are up against esp in developing countries, where the problems are most acute.
In the meantime, air purifiers reduce the extent that our health deteriorates. The effect of air purifiers production is relatively tiny compared to pollutants from the rest of the economy.
As usual, the actual scientific results are paywalled [0]. I guess we just have to make informed opinions based on science journalism, which is pretty much impossible.
The only reason I posted this in the first place is that I was having trouble verifying the captcha on my phone, and it made me think about how this site shouldn't even need to exist.
There are also studies hinting at a potential pathway involved in this: exposure to particulate air pollution appears to reduce the activity of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). [1] [2]
Based on the amount of carbon monoxide and other pollutants that enter a car's cabin at highway speeds, this is likely a huge cause of road rage, speeding, and other reckless driving behaviors. These strong emotional states don't always end when we exit our vehicle, and so may affect us through our day. Our commuting time becomes a divisor of our overall daily intelligence, and quality of life.
As an Indian living in India, this saddens me a lot. India has perhaps the world's biggest share of most polluted cities [1], and there are next to none measures taken. PM 2.5 in Delhi regularly shoots beyond 200 (while general guidelines for good quality air is <50).
The sad part really is that the pollution is more of a political and enforcement problem than a technological one. And none of the wonders of our technology will help us solve the "messy" problems that occur in a democracy of heterogeneous people (of India).
This may be true on the surface, but India is an incredibly diverse mix of people. There are a ton (talking 60-70+) of groups of people with different cultures who speak different languages and often different religions. They make look the same to you; they are not the same. Go there and see it for yourself. It is incredible.
I don't know OPs original intent, but I would have interpreted that as heterogeneity of socio-economic status. India has a very wide income disparity from the poorest to the richest.
> U.S. is by far more of a melting pot than India.
What do you mean? Basically the only reason India is one country is because the British ruled it as one country. It is about as culturally and linguistically diverse as all of Europe.
Not exactly the same entity (British India ended up stretching further east) but Mughals ruled it as one country too, and the East India Company kept up the fiction that the Mughals were still in charge for as long as possible.
India has 22 official languages. The US, by comparison, has two (ignoring the native languages of Hawaii and Alaska, which have a tiny number of speakers). That may give some indication of relative heterogeneity of the two countries.
India has more than 600 recognized languages (22 official ones) and a highly stratified society in terms of the poverty/wealth continuum, education, opportunities, and ethnicities... pretty diverse I'd say. Have you ever been there?
The idea behind the "Melting pot" analogy is that while our ancestors may have spoken German or Irish or Congolese or Yiddish or Vietnamese or whatever, we've all agglomerated now and come to form a single nation with a single shared language (whatever we may speak at home). The various ethnicities that make up India haven't been melted together to the same extent that American ethnicities have - thought my impression is that India has a fairly strong national identity anyways.
A conclusion like that seems very prone to data misinterpretation and bad methodology. Skimming the article I couldn't find any mention of the method used to reach the conclusion. Can anyone shed a light on the method used in the study?
The crazy thing is, as far as I'm aware, it wouldn't be a difficult engineering feat to get standard air-filters on exhaust pipes. Most air filters are merely a sac of activated-charcoal.
I don't even know where to start. Activated charcoal stuck in a car exhaust would not filter PM2.5 and wouldn't even do what was intended once it becomes saturated.
For particles, this already exists on all new diesel vehicles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_particulate_filter). They use filters made out of materials that can stand up to very high heat, and then when the filter gets clogged up, the vehicle injects some fuel and burns off the accumulated particles. This may start to get used in gasoline cars as well -- the new direct injection gas engines produce a lot of particulates, but this is not yet well regulated.
> Impact of high levels of toxic air ‘is equivalent to having lost a year of education’
Since when is education equivalent to intelligence?
I thought that the current definition of intelligence is a relatively stable performance measure that is entirely independent of education (though it does predict academic performance).
In hindsight, European car makers' decision to go all out for diesel was a spectacular blunder, with horrendous consequences for health. Looking forward to the day they finally ban this filthy, choking fuel.
If this was absolutely true, China and India would stop having any maths/science/arts/medicine/CS people.
Pollution control is on my mind constantly, and I hope we get a hold on pollution soon. But to be honest, the western media is after it a bit like how they were after Salt or Egg yokes earlier. I don't know why but the press constantly needs a target to pile everything on.
180 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 227 ms ] threadBut to this article's authors, "intelligence" is increased by education, so harmful effects of pollution can be measured in years of education lost.
Is there a general cultural difference in how intelligence is thought of in China as opposed to the US?
Which is false.
You have a specific amount of neurons and a lot of them die every day. The body doesn't produce them like other cells after a certain age threshold (age 21 IIRC, also depends on the individual). - Although this theory is currently on the edge of being disproved, it's clear that adult brains are not producing many of them.
Training and experience can compensate this loss, but the general cognitive capacity gets reduced each day.
Pretty depressive to think about it, but maybe we'll be able to use stem cell research to change this in the future.
edit: I don't want to state this as definitive facts. The field of neurogenesis is currently heavily researched and there are some hints that adult brains might be able to produce new neurons. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-adult-br... for a discussion.
What I think is most likely is that we lose 10x times the amount of neurons that we create each day, so even if it's producing new ones, the rate of death is higher.
That said environment obviously does play some role, but that role is already a minority player and seems to be getting smaller as we learn more about genetics.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
In this case, however, the statement you mention is technically correct. But one thing you have to account for is that 20% encompasses all environmental differences. Put another way, if we all had a 100% identical upbringing and environmental factors then the heritability of any given observation would obviously be 100%, since any deviations from the norm would be primarily due to genetic factors. So that means that all of the wild variations in our upbringings and backgrounds are constrained to as little as 20% of any variation in IQ.
What sort of an argument is this? You can lose an arm in an accident, does this mean you can also gain an arm?
That said, it's still not an excellent measure for basing predictions on, by the standards of "traditional" science. But if you don't put any weight in IQ, then there's nothing in the entire field that you should have any faith in.
I know it ruins some American Dream ideas, people with IQ below 80 are pretty much not employable, but that's just how it is. Some people have much harder time achieving things that others do with ease and we don't know any way to help them. For some reason people see it in a very different light than e.g. somebody having some disease that he has to organize his life around it or e.g. being paralyzed.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3950413/
edit: btw I love and highly recommend Brain That Changes Itself book, by Norman Doidge, but this is something different
We put way too much confidence into science in general. It's our God we don't question.
On the contrary, it's almost a definition of science that we question, challenge, and evolve it all the time.
According to this paper[0]:
the cognitive benefits of modafinil seem particularly marked in tests of vigilance and speed, in which sleepiness would be an important factor. Furthermore, the results indicate that high IQ may limit detection of modafinil's positive effects.
[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16140369
Edit: This might be interesting to you if you want some scientific literature. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroneuro.2015.07.028
Some references are welcome. Pure guess, but we do know that most society is sleep deprived and that sleep deprivation affects cognitive performance. As far as I understand it, modafinil can alleviate that.
I scored 123 at 8 or 9 on the weshler test, and 90 on the spatial visualization part. (that mean that around 60% of the european population was better than me at spatial visualization when i was a kid). However, i'm able to play blindchess and chart a course since i'm a teen, i was probably one of the best at understanding geometry/vectors in highschool and the only math course i wasn't bad at in college were topology and n-dimmension vectorized spaces. If i "blundered" the IQ test, i'm not aware of it (i know i wasn't very cooperative, but still). Maybe i misundertand what spatial vizualisation mean, but i don't think so.
Oh and also one part of the test was general knowledge, and i don't believe it can't be trained (like the puzzles/tangrams, symbol recognition or verbal expression tests).
If you're right, then it's reassuring for me since i feel like i'm more dumb on multiple subject than when i was a kid.
I guess it's more an expression of the point of view of the society, who doesn't care about persons, but about what they can bring to the enterprises. Education is formating workers, and if pollution makes you lose one year of education, that's a lot of money lost.
> If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number people would think you're mad
I wouldn’t think you’re mad. Many others wouldn’t either. Powerlifting competitions are already close to this. Take your performance across the four major lifts (benchpress, squat, shoulder press, deadlift) and devise a formula to combine it into a total number measuring the “general” strength of a person. You can compete on individual lifts, and if you break out that score some will be better than others at individual lifts, but the larger number remains indicative of well-rounded achievement in orthogonal areas.
That being said, I don’t think physical strength is comparable in any case.
> probably most people in the world would think the concept of "IQ" is mad, and yet, in some countries, so many people believe in it.
I think most people either “believe” in IQ or don’t think about it often enough to have an opinion. In fact skepticism about IQ is, in my experience, a distinct phenomeon on message boards and not at all representative of society in general.
Its consistently measured as a single number by the US military - it's just a combination of your performance on several exercises - traditionally pull ups, distance run times, swim times, number of crunches, etc.
So, again, fitness is consistently measured as a single number by one of the world's largest organizations. Don't postulate it's absurd. The same aggregation can be done for intelligence.
I'm not saying it's useless, but to me it is way overvaluated by some people. Maybe you can approximate intelligence with an IQ test, but the number itself is meaningless imho. The classification can be used though.
For individuals the results of IQ tests probably are oversold as you say given their noisiness. But for public health problems like air pollution where the results are averaged over populations they're probably undervalued if anything.
You don't need standardisation for IQ tests, because 100 will always be the mean. Get people to do your test, set the mean at 100 and you've got an IQ test.
>And IQ number is a comparison (you calculate the standard deviation). Also, even in clinical tests, multiple scales can be used
It measures deviation from the mean, and 15 points is used to show a standard deviation. This is how any clinical test will be administered.
>those tests don't mesure everything
Fantastic point. They ONLY measure intelligence.
>I'm not saying it's useless, but to me it is way overvaluated by some people. Maybe you can approximate intelligence with an IQ test, but the number itself is meaningless imho.
The problem with saying this is that IQ tests are far and away the best way of measuring intelligence. They do a pretty good job of it, as shown by their relative success in predicting outcomes. If you don't put any weight in IQ tests, then there's really nothing else you could rationally give any value to when it comes to measuring intelligence.
>but to me it is way overvaluated by some people
Personally, I think they're overvalued to the extent that intelligence in general is.
I’m also pretty skeptical that there’s a meaningful difference between what the modal person in the UK and US (respectively) believes about IQ. I could probably be persuaded, but I don’t see any reason to think your opinion has anything to do with your country or nationality.
If you draw any conclusions about what Americans are obsessed with from HN comments, you will almost always be wrong.
What!? Where can I get a hold of those drugs? :-)
There's no forcing the data to be single-dimensional regardless of the underlying truth about intelligence. People genuinely made an attempt to measure intelligence, and the measures people came up with happened to measure something best described as a single number.
Psychology researchers have tried to do the same with personality, and the principle component analysis spit out five dimensions rather than one. That's why the "Big 5" personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) are a thing.
In social science research there is often a tradeoff between measurement quality and sampling quality. Do you want to measure your variables really well in a small sample, or measure them crudely in a large sample.
Wouldn't it be honest to just accept the fact that both methods don't provide data that's relevant and trustworthy enough for the research at hand? It sound irresponsible to draw conclusions (that will be picked up by newspapers and eventually policy makers) based on data that does not merit them, only because no beter data is available.
My girlfreind is currently doing a doctorate psychology study, of which a small part is a standardised IQ test (though I dont know which standard; there are several). She asked if she could practice the process on me.
There are several sections, but to pick 2.
For language acuity, I scored OK. This section basically asked you to define a series of given words. Your knowledge here absolutely would change depending on your environment, job and education.
For pattern recognition, I scored fantastically. But I know this is because of years of studying geometry in math classes. I know exactly what my thought processes were, "Count the vertexs, count the edges, count the bisections, are some things odd, are some things even, do some things add together, do the shapes mirror once/twice, are they rotated". I know exactly where I picked those ideas up.
In the UK you can drop Maths and English/Creative Writing at 17. If you finish a pHD at 26 you havent regularly explored those ideas in near on 10 years, but you absolutely could still achieve it, so I do think its a better measure.
Then I am not sure if it is actually measuring intelligence.
Some attributes can be changed, some, on the other hand, not so much.
While I admittedly did not read the science paper, the newspaper indicates that they used test scores as the actual number, and the "cognitive drop equivalent to one year of education" phrase is just a way to explain the results, presumably anchored by how people in different school grades score in those tests.
Quoted from http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/27/against-individual-iq-w...
Ref [1] is https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-barry-kaufman/intellige...
So there's a high correlation, and it's much easier to measure than IQ.
I had a similar reaction when I read that line. I mean how does one correlate number of years of education to intelligence, which is already a somewhat abstract concept. That is like saying "If you wear this makeup, your partner will love you as if they were married to you twice as long"..
https://psyarxiv.com/kymhp/
That's already much better than what I had feared. Not perfect, of course, but better than the usual "corellation == causation" journalism.
[0] http://health.utah.gov/enviroepi/healthyhomes/epht/AirPollut...
Do they perform on the normal level after the pollution? That would be a hint that the results of the IQ tests just temporarily drop (I would be careful to say that the intelligence dropped).
If people leave the polluted area, they'll restore their normal intelligence. When I hear "reduction in intelligence", I immediately think that they talk about permanent reduction (because a big part of fluid intelligence is genetics, the efficiency of synapses and the amount of neurons - although some research [1] indicates that nurture and training can have significant effects on fluid intelligence).
It's unclear if they talk about permanent and irreversible damage IMO. For me it seems like they want to frame it that way which could be a bit clickbait-y depending on the matter of facts.
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2383939/
First, in general, air pollution inhibits respondents ’ test performance. Except for the effects of 1-d and 7-d air pollution exposure on math test scores (first and second columns in panel B), all of the coefficients for mean APIs over a longer period are negative and statistically significant.
Second, the damage of air pollution on cognitive performance is more sizable when using longer window of exposure measure. As shown at the bottom in panel A, an increase in the 7-d-mean API by 1 SD lowers verbal test scores by 0.278 point (0.026 SD), while a 1 SD increase in average API over 3 y before the interview is associated with 1.132 points (0.108 SD) drop in verbal test scores.
Third, air pollution exposure appears to exert a more negative effect on verbal test performance than math test performance.
That doesn't imply that the effect is irreversible, but it does mean that there are long-term changes which accumulate with longer exposure to air pollution.
Please correct me if I'm wrong. Sounds very interesting and I hope that people will finally fight against air pollution. Undoing it is not only healthier but also economically relevant. Sad that such studies seem to be necessary, but it's good that such revelations lead to more pressure for the policy makers.
I am particular interested in these studies because my family lives in a very clean rural mountainous area in Thailand and my son is attending a pretty good international school here. But I am considering moving him to a bigger and better school in Bangkok - a dirty, polluted, congested city. If this study is true then am I really gaining anything? The difficult tradeoff was health impact for improved educational opportunity. But if the pollution equates to a one year loss of education then maybe there is little to no gain.
Personally, I think that a much better move is to stay where you are and instead save up to fund a one-year exchange to a prestigious international university when he's been at some national university for a couple of years. AFAIK many prestigious universities accept almost an unlimited number of international exchange students, as long as they can pay the tuition fees.
First issue with the school is the quality of classmates. It is a small school with small classes, which is good, right? Except there are only six students in his class this year and his classmates are generally low achievers, poor English speakers, and pretty lousy friends. I want him to be surrounded by high achievers and have some choices when it comes to friends. Seems unlikely that will ever happen at this school.
Second issue is that the school is pretty stagnant. At a time when international schools in Thailand are booming, adding new campuses and programs every year, this school is just plodding along with its old tired facilities and pathetic extracurricular offerings. I've been trying to make up for that with lots of after school activities like having our own little Maker Space, doing robotics, and visiting the museums and children's activity centers in Thailand which are very good. But he doesn't get to do that stuff with kids his age because of issue number one.
I was a volunteer judge earlier this year at a robotics competition held at one of the international schools in Bangkok. I got to see what a number of schools are doing and it is pretty impressive. One of the schools I particularly like has a STEM program in association with MIT, and a performing arts program in association with Juilliard. They are also introducing robotics into the primary curriculumn this year. Impressive stuff.
I'm planning to do as you suggested but that is still a number of years away. Need to figure out what I'm going to do near term. And moving to Bangkok just seems so painful.
Ok, enough of this long winded personal issues rant.
Since your son is likely very good with English already, it might not be necessary for him to continue studying in an international school (I understand there are trade-offs). It might be worth it if he moves to a top local school, where more high achievers study instead.
For something more specific, I think I might be of some help. Please send me an email (in my profile) if you'd like.
I'd say your child would gain much more from having good private tutors you hand-pick from local schools/universities/private tutoring centers (depending on the level of your son's attainment and the qualifications of the teachers). Also, for certain subjects, you could be a great teacher yourself.
Even without taking pollution impact into account, using the hours saved from commuting in a very congested city to study one-on-one or in a small group would likely net a bigger gain than what quality difference there is between the good local school and a top school in the capital city. The key conditions are 1) having qualified tutors who fit with the student's personality and interests and 2) regular schedule so the student does not spend the extra hours playing mobile games instead.
Another key advantage is your child can use the best educational materials available on the Web, paid and free, such as Khan Academy, 3Blue1Brown, and the likes for learning. The presentations there are often head-and-shoulders above the techniques most school teachers typically use to explain concepts in class.
Edit: For a downvoter who I assume might disagree with the last paragraph, you need to go visit average schools in a developing country to see how the teaching is like.
Why? You can't just say that and expect people to trust you. The fact that they followed the same people may reduce the chances of certain DNA traits having an effect but how does that rule out other commonalities in environmental conditions. If you're in a polluted city it seems likely that you're in a large city. So do all the common traits of a large city also reduce your intelligence?
I want to read the study but I don't want to subscribe. If there is logical proof in the study that this is not simply a correlation, the guardian piece does not represent it.
http://aqicn.org/map/london/ http://aqicn.org/map/jiyuan http://aqicn.org/map/delhi
EDIT: Disregard this stuffy reply, my humor detector was off.
Jokes aside, London isn't very polluted compared to a lot of large cities in the eastern hemisphere.
There have been studies that show high amounts of road traffic cause increased secretions of a certain enzyme into the frontal cortex, causing high levels of stress and increased memory loss.
"logical proof" - your wording.
Your confusion stems from equating these two.
Whenever somebody defends the quality of democratic representation in the UK, I just remind myself that these are people who would rather they and their own children suffered illness and premature death than take action that might piss off business and motorist lobbying groups.
I agree that scientific conclusions are sometime editorialized to convey the pressing nature of the findings (the evidence is what it is), but 100% wrong or 100% right I don't think it would do you much harm to reduce the amount of pollution you're exposed to on a daily basis.
And, as with Pascal's wager, that's unconvincing: one could spend all that money differently, on things one would like (just as in Pascal's wager, choosing to believe in God isn't cost-free: it means loving others, being charitable &c., even if one would rather not).
"What if you were a good person for no reason?" is perhaps the most Hacker News comment I've ever read.
The worst case is that there is a positive effect from pollution. When one looks at the historic data it wasn't until people started living in smog filled cities that children started attending schools.
We shouldn't fall into the trap of assuming causation and correlation just because it gels with something in your subconscious.
Which is true most of the time..
I mean, people getting into an automobile for no good reason also thinks that they won't be the one that would end up dying or maimed in an accident. I mean, aren't we all guilty or dumb in that way?
That, or perhaps something even more sinister: they'd rather enjoy a 5 minute cigarette respite from life than live without that respite.
Lawmakers, too, have hellish lives. Turn a blind eye to stuff that doesn't matter here and how, and instead focus on getting whatever will better they and their families.
Does anyone do that any more? I thought most were in broad agreement that UK has one of the less representative democracies. We also have one of the most centralised democracies - local government has a tiny fraction of the power and proportion of budget that it had 50 years ago.
Which makes reading of cities around the world where it's significantly worse that much gloomier.
*Once a month on the assumption that most sessions are only attended by a handful of MPs.
On the other hand I once heard that the rich in Germany (in some places at least) have worse air quality than the poor, because the rich all have got their fireplaces going (how ironic is that?-)
Most sessions of the House are attended by a handful of MPs, because no real work is happening there. Meaningful debate in the House is rare, and the results of divisions (votes) are usually known ahead of time. And in any case a debate is not a good way to write any kind of document, so any MP actually wanting to make a difference is doing so in committees, which are not seen on TV nearly as often, but are pretty well attended from my quick scan of attendance records.
My local MP commutes, less than two hours each way - gets the same train home I was catching after visiting the (London) office, so leaving London just after 1900 on a weekday, to obviously the same city I live in on the coast.
Those who live further away have flats in London, they stay for four nights a week and go home at weekends. Indeed some of the last train services heading North on a Friday are almost explicitly for such MPs and staff. Kings Cross to Edinburgh on a Friday evening is not exactly a tourist route, it won't get there until after midnight.
Using an official car would be an unacceptable expense except for certain senior ministers (who work in London all the time, e.g. the Prime Minister and often senior cabinet ministers live there) and it's frowned on even then, one of the few good things you can say about Boris (Johnson, the city's previous mayor) is that he rode a bicycle a lot rather than constantly getting official cars just a few miles up the road.
MPs are also often around, even if they are not in the Commons chamber. They are generally aware of proceedings in the chamber, and come in when there is a vote that is relevant.
I don't think it's common for MPs to bring their families to London for "years on end". Most MPs will have a flat they use when in London (probably in a nice building with HVAC, well away from the most polluted roads and neighbourhoods). But they will typically maintain their main residence in/near their home constituencies.
Likewise for the Lords. Most of them commute and don't spend all that much time in London.
https://learn.allergyandair.com/houseplants-indoor-air-quali...
One minor trick I use when walking down the street is to rapidly exhale if I've breathed in a particularly bad volume of exhaust pollution, like concentrated diesel fumes, walking on a few paces before re-inhaling. I expect it takes ~1s to detect the bubble of bad air and the surrounding air is polluted too. So just mitigation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study
https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence
https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution
We have decades of data to show this positive correlation. Now I'm wondering how the study measured intelligence and of course who funded this study.
Edit: Seems like a lot of people are misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying air pollution is good. I think air pollution is bad. I'm just pointing out raw objective data which contradicts the study.
If air pollution causes reduction in intelligence, IQs would not have increased so much in the past 100 years as air pollution skyrocketed.
Can't say air pollution causes huge reduction in intelligence while IQs have drastically increased in an increasing air pollution environment.
The study claims a causal relationship - air pollution causes huge reduction in intelligence. The objective data of the last 100 years clearly shows that's not true.
The study tracked localized effects on individuals.
These are not necessarily in contradiction! Though whatever you're inferring with your broad correlation (air pollution has no negative effect on intelligence? air pollution improves intelligence?) is much weaker than the study, which clearly has made attempts to isolate variables.
When one increased the average education level by something like 5-10 years, as was the case in many Asian countries in the last century, it is not surprising there was a significant increase in intelligence. Thankfully the effect of pollution has not been drastic enough to negate all of those gains. It still does not mean we should neglect its likely significant negative impact.
From the paper:
> Cutting annual mean concentration of particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10) in China to the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard (50 μg/m3) would move people from the median to the 63rd percentile (verbal test scores) and the 58th percentile (math test scores), respectively.
Because industrialization is also positively correlated with pollution and urbanization, especially during its first phase, you would also expect to find a long-term positive correlation between pollution and intelligence.
However, if you factor out the positive effects of mass education, then you will likely find, as expected, that intelligence decreases as toxicity of the environment rises.
> Cutting annual mean concentration of particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10) in China to the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard (50 μg/m3) would move people from the median to the 63rd percentile (verbal test scores) and the 58th percentile (math test scores), respectively.
It seems like HEPA air purifiers should help quite a bit if one spends on a lot of time indoor. At least having one in the bedroom would reduce exposure time by at least one-third, which should be useful.
It also sounds like by investing modestly in air purifiers, most offices in polluted cities could even net productivity gains from healthier employees who suffer less from allergy and congested airways, in addition to long-term maintenance of their cognitive function.
Doesn't the production and usage of air purifiers contribute to air pollution over its entire product life cycle?
Don't production, usage and waste treatment of air purifiers contribute to air pollution over their entire product life cycle?
In the meantime, air purifiers reduce the extent that our health deteriorates. The effect of air purifiers production is relatively tiny compared to pollutants from the rest of the economy.
[0]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/08/21/1809474115
https://sci-hub.tw/http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/08...
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21708224
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25816123
The sad part really is that the pollution is more of a political and enforcement problem than a technological one. And none of the wonders of our technology will help us solve the "messy" problems that occur in a democracy of heterogeneous people (of India).
What do you mean? Basically the only reason India is one country is because the British ruled it as one country. It is about as culturally and linguistically diverse as all of Europe.
Educated guess #2 - less pollution = better environment, country side and/or nature rich + less stress
Once it became saturated, you'd obviously replace it, likely at an annual exhaust inspection.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0016236189... [2] https://university2.taylors.edu.my/EURECA/2014/downloads/46....
Since when is education equivalent to intelligence?
I thought that the current definition of intelligence is a relatively stable performance measure that is entirely independent of education (though it does predict academic performance).
Pollution control is on my mind constantly, and I hope we get a hold on pollution soon. But to be honest, the western media is after it a bit like how they were after Salt or Egg yokes earlier. I don't know why but the press constantly needs a target to pile everything on.