Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence

unenvironment.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 188 posts

Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence

#171

Post by jcranmer »

aero142 wrote: post #147
r00fus wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that a "year of education" is a lot more quantifiable to your average person than "2 points of IQ". IQ isn't used for anything meaningful in terms of ability or qualifications, especially since it's age-adjusted and historically has been biased against minorities/foreigners. A year of development however, is a graspable (if shocking) measure of lost opportunity/capability.

Yes, but I'm confused about the truthfulness of the statement. Is it true that an additional year of education is equivalent to 2 points of IQ?

The original IQ tests were used to gauge what was termed "mental age", what age you were functionally acting at, and was a ratio of your mental age over your chronological age times 100--a ten year old working at an eleven-year old's level had an IQ of 110.

That said, modern IQ doesn't use that definition, and all of the material you can easily find on the matter pretends that it does. Instead, IQ is a normalized bell curve, every 15 points is another standard deviation on the bell curve. Given that definition, a year's worth of education is probably guesstimated at roughly one standard deviation of IQ. This comes with the massive caveat that IQ and educational achievement can't be compared in that manner (since one is an absolute scale and the other is definitionally a statistical artifact).

Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence

#172

Post by aaron695 »

robynsmith wrote: post #131

Is there a way to counteract the effects? Especially if you live in a large city?

Yes.

You buy air filters (ie HEPA) and an air quality (ie PM) detection device.

Even skipping intelligence, it's important to stop cancer.

Start googling.

Normally you're talking about reducing PM10 and PM2.5

If you're talking fixing damage once done to the body, currently there's no known way.

Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence

#173

Post by apta »

eneveu wrote: post #167

I recently learned that the parisian subway and suburban trains contain a lot of particulate pollution (e.g. PM10), caused by braking (electrical brakes would reduce this) and rail grinding (maintenance done to reduce squealing in curves). The small particulate pollution is actually worse than what you find in traffic jams in the city center... I'm looking into buying an anti-pollution mask. It will probably look wei…

For what it's worth, I wear a respirator[1] when I take the subway. Some people may look at you, but I don't really care.

That being said, I recall reading an article where they said studied long term subway commuters and did not find health issues due to commuting.

Furthermore, you can apparently build an air filter for the fraction of the cost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q45CkwKiOvw

[1] like the "3M Aura Particulate Respirator". There are also filter with activated charcoal

Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence

#174

Post by imcoconut »

apta wrote: post #173
eneveu wrote: post #167

I recently learned that the parisian subway and suburban trains contain a lot of particulate pollution (e.g. PM10), caused by braking (electrical brakes would reduce this) and rail grinding (maintenance done to reduce squealing in curves). The small particulate pollution is actually worse than what you find in traffic jams in the city center... I'm looking into buying an anti-pollution mask. It will probably look wei…

For what it's worth, I wear a respirator[1] when I take the subway. Some people may look at you, but I don't really care. That being said, I recall reading an article where they said studied long term subway commuters and did not find health issues due to commuting. Furthermore, you can apparently build an air filter for the fraction of the cost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q45CkwKiOvw [1] like the "3M Aura Parti…

Do you live in NYC? and have you found that it helps?

Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence

#175

Post by pavelrub »

yorwba wrote: post #164
pavelrub wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. "A year of education" is mostly about gaining knowledge. It's obvious that air pullution can't possibly make you forget one year of such knowledge, and I have no idea in what other intuitive way this can be interpreted that makes any sense to the average person. If it's meaningfull to someone then it's only because he understood it wrongly.

> It's obvious that air pullution can't possibly make you forget one year of such knowledge, Is it? What people remember of one year of education is probably very little to begin with and it only gets less over time; it doesn't seem unbelievable that pollution could cause those memories to decay faster.

Well if that seems plausible to you then it's only further proof of how misleading the wording is, as the actual study makes no claims about people forgetting a year of education.

Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence

#176

Post by pcthrowaway »

SahAssar wrote: post #145
InitialLastName wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also somehow the amount of cars per capita is still very high in NL. That's OK. We can keep up the consumerist "Everybody needs a car" mentality as long as the amount of driving per capita stays low.

The manufacturing of a car still consumes a lot of resources and lets out a lot of CO2 though, right?

A good alternative to this is carsharing. Lots of people in Vancouver don't own a car, they just take one from one of the 5 car-shares when they need one

Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence

#177

Post by trobertson »

Bartweiss wrote: post #155
ip26 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So-and-so third grader reads & does math at a second grade level" is about the most intuitive metric we've got.

It's a very easy way to talk about childhood progression under compulsory education, yes. But if not everyone is in school then I don't know whether "losing a year" means losing the schooling, or losing the year of development. More crucially, the main result here was about older adults losing capacities. If someone tells me that a 70 year old dementia patient has effectively "lost a year of education", I don't have…

You might consider other metrics, like the school grade level that most journalistic entities write for. In the USA, it used to be that most journalists wrote towards a 5th grade reading ability. Assuming that the article is correct, then many journalists who sell to air-pollutant-exposed people (which is most people) should be targeting a 4th grade reading ability, perhaps even lower.

On a wild tangent, there has been a huge increase in clickbait over the past several years.

Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence

#178

Post by Reason077 »

InitialLastName wrote: post #108
medoed wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the Netherlands and I can confirm that. In just a couple of decades they transformed all their car friendly cities and made cars second rate citizens Cycling infrastructure is amazing. It is almost always faster to travel by bike than by car. They did it so long ago and the world still hasn’t caught up. I’m very sad about that. Also somehow the amount of cars per capita is still very high in NL.

> Also somehow the amount of cars per capita is still very high in NL. That's OK. We can keep up the consumerist "Everybody needs a car" mentality as long as the amount of driving per capita stays low.

Parked cars take up a lot of space in city centres that could be used more productively.

Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence

#179

Post by Reason077 »

stupidcar wrote: post #152
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A city that was never designed for bikes is hell for bikes, so you end up with only the most reckless bikers on the road. I commute with a bike every day in Paris, France. The infrastructure isn't great but it's OK, and it's improving. The thing is: I'm a big, strong guy who can legally outrun most cars and motorbikes in such a big, dense city. I can fight my way in traffic, mostly because the law authorizes bikes to…

I definitely agree about the last part. I live in London, don’t drive, and cycling would definitely be preferable to relying entirely on the Tube and taxis. But when I see the hell cyclists here have to contend with, and how aggressive they need to be, I know there’s no way I am a skilled or confident enough rider to do the same. But if the infrastructure and vehicle congestion ever improved to the point where cyclis…

Compared to many cities, London is actually pretty good for cycling now days, at least in central areas. We’re no Amsterdam, but there are some high-quality dedicated cycling routes and plenty of quiet side streets to use. Traffic speeds are relatively low and the vast majority of drivers are considerate and cycle-aware (occasional white-van idiots aside...)

Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence

#180

Post by astrostl »

jesstaa wrote: post #27
Reason077 wrote: post #3

Electrification of surface transport is the most obvious way to improve air quality in dense cities. This needs to be a priority.

human powered transport like walking or cycling works great in dense cities, it's more space efficient so it scales better too.

Related to the OP, I anecdotally have an acquaintance that is a bike messenger in the UK, who second-hand anecdotally reports that everyone who does it is an ostensible model of fitness until they 1) get hit by a car or 2) die at 50 of lung disease. There's a chicken/egg thing with regard to non-vehicle transport in that you're more directly exposed to exhaust, and aspirating it more quickly because of exercise. Which exacerbates the negative impact of pollution, which puts you back in a vehicle, which increases pollution :-/
Post reply on HN