Air pollution can make kids behave badly
Tiny particles in car exhaust can directly impact the brain.
When wildfires started raging through southern California this month, Diana Younan warned her family members living in the path of the smoke to stay inside, as much as possible. Fires send air pollution levels soaring, filling the air with tiny particles. Younan, who studies environmental health at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, knows the damage those tiny particles can do.
Its very well known that air pollution can affect respiratory function or health. But its not as well known that it can also affect the brain, says Younan. Over the past decade, scientists started to note mounting evidence that suggests inhaling polluted air is toxic to the brain. That is slowly being linked to behavior, particularly for children and adolescents.
Its similar, Younan says, to the way childhood exposure to leadwhich used to be used in paint and gaswas eventually connected to behavioral problems. Some scientists even suspect that the decline in crime seen in the U.S. (and many nations) since the 1990s can be connected to the removal of lead from gasoline. Lead is what pioneered the whole research on environmental risk factors, she says.
In an analysis of data from nearly 700 children, Younan and her team found that kids in Los Angeles who were exposed to more air pollution over the course of adolescence were more likely to engage in delinquent behavior. The research was published today in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. It also found that the same amount of pollution exposure had a stronger effect on behavior when kids had bad relationships with their parents, or when their mothers exhibited signs of depression.
The study used data gathered from kids over the course of almost a decade, starting when they were nine years old. Parents completed questionnaires on their children's behavior (which asked about things like lying and cheating, substance use, and vandalism) every few years. The research team then used data on daily measures of air pollution in the area to classify the amount of pollution each child was exposed to near their home over the course of the study.
More:
https://www.popsci.com/exposure-to-air-pollution-kids-behavior
Car exhaust is a major source of pollution.
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