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Science Says: Pollution Makes You Dumb - FutureIQ

1,773 views Wait, is this logic right? • Nov 04, 2023
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Slog Reference: Pollution is making you dumb

Description

The bad effects of pollution are not limited to physical health. There are numerous studies that have observed the effects of pollution on human intelligence and the results will shock you. However counterintuitive it may seem, pollution is making you dumb. Let's take a deep dive into the topic with Dr. Navin Kabra and the funny and sensitive RJ. Shrikant in this episode of futureIQ.

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Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

Links:
https://patrickcollison.com/pollution: Pollution and IQ
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-10/air-pollution-kills-far-more-people-than-covid-ever-will: Pollution kills more people than Covid ever will
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/12/why-the-new-pollution-literature-is-credible.html: Pollution Research

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:55 Examples
06:45 The legitimacy of studies
13:28 Why should you care?
15:05 Long-term effects
17:38 Anti-principle
19:50 What to do with this information
23:50 Comparing deaths by pollution

#futureiq #pollution

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Transcript

everyone knows that pollution is bad for health but nobody really cares you probably don't know that pollution kills about 6 to 9 million people per year but even that you probably don't care I want to talk about something that you will care about if you knew which is 6 to9 million people a year that's yes we will come to that that's not the important part of the show okay okay um the important thing is that pollution makes you dumb okay your J results will go down on polluted days so that's what I want to talk about the impact on your brain your thinking your cognition your are results and J right so that's what I
want to talk about and this is not something people talk about much even though there is tons of research there are papers after paper after serious yes I'm serious let me give some examples okay pollution is making me dumb well dumb more dumber than I F more Dumber see there you go a 2019 paper shows that chess players make more mistakes on polluted days but chess players don't play outside CH players the pollution comes indoor okay outdoor pollution and indoor pollution are two different things both of them make you dumb okay there is enough research on both those areas okay I'm already so dumb I didn't know about indoor pollution apparently it exist so for example a pollution is counted using
these particulate matter right PM 2.5 and pm1 so 2.5 is particles that are smaller than 2.5 micromet 10 is particles that are smaller than 10 micromet so PM 2.5 just floats it comes into your rooms like so uh in fact New York Stock Exchange which is like proper indoors with AC and all of that there is a 2016 paper which shows that on polluted days the NYSC Stock Exchange returns are lower wait okay wait what does returns have anything to do with people being dumb right so the basic idea is that if the market is being efficient right when somebody sells a stock it finds the right buyer and uh stocks go up when you
are unable to find buyers basically there's a mismatch uh efficiency is lower and that's why go down okay in fact the research went into more detail right it figured out that volatility increases on pollution days which means that you know things are either suddenly going up too much or going down too much which is a clear sign of people making uh uh basically dumb decisions I have a theory about this especially because we've recently done something but I'm going to hold on to that theory for a bit will come yeah so uh also pollution reduces patients Inc increases risk aversion because you can't think clearly so then you get a little more conservative about everything all of
this leads to worse price Discovery and that is why the stock market goes down okay indoors okay you want Outdoors yes outoors 2018 paper which shows that baseball Empires make more mistakes on polluted days if it applies to baseball Empires it also applies to Cricket Empires but then one argument would we made is that if there is smog then umpires cannot see clearly so they obviously make mistakes no we are not talking about smog okay we are talking about pm2.5 PM 10 which is not visible in the air it is not we are not talking Delhi levels pollutions okay that is a different ball game altogether we are talking that causes even other problems regular pollution like the kind
of I mean a polluted day according to this research is typically 15 microG per M Cube okay that would be an aqi of around 20 30 or 40 or something like that right which would be like a ridiculously clean day in Indian cities yeah I was just going to say because in India in Pune specifically I remember 150 plus is considered a good day well minus 150 plus and then we start yeah worrying about a little how polluted it is correct so 15 plus is considered polluted as far as these research you won't see any or anything but your brain starts reducing okay one you might want to bleep this out we are royally Roger
AR so um well the good news H is that on polluted does even politicians stop thinking clearly okay wait hold on hold on polit Canada okay a 2019 paper showing that on polluted days Canadian politicians give speeches that are less complex okay they sat and analyzed possible that they have already figured out the importance of pollution on IQ and on polluted days they don't want to tax people's IQs too much you're in that sense they are actually very intelligent well if you have politicians like that maybe it is true in your universe but not ours okay okay right so but I can totally imagine you going you know I'm not a chess player I am not a
baseball ire how does it matter I was just about to say that I am not a chess player I'm not a baseball player I'm not a politician for sure okay never wanted to be let's talk about impact on regular people please let's do the most important regular people is children is you and me okay children also students there's lots of research showing that students in schools that are in polluted areas have worse scores than students in schools that are less polluted okay uh rural urban rural less polluted Urban more polluted that that argument kind of breaks down no so it is not rural urban okay okay I mean the people doing this research are not idiots right
they have heard about everything that we talk about in uh our episodes right right so they control for such factors in fact let's take one very specific example okay generally it is known that if a school is near a highway right okay it is more polluted and the test scores there are lower okay and if your school is further away from a highway test scores are higher I didn't know that but that's interesting yeah right no but when we were preparing for this episode you came up whining that oh it's not the what if it's not the pollution what if it they're just distracted by the noise yeah that's yeah so these people are smart one group group went and did the
following research okay they took schools which are the same distance away from the highways okay but half of them were downwind from the highway and half of were upwind okay right so half the schools were getting the pollution in and other half of the schools the uh pollution wasn't affecting as much whereas the distance was same so the sound and other distraction would have been the same and they found that schools which were downwind H had lower test scores M more absences in school and more behavioral incidents so schools that were being affected by the pollution had uh everything was worse everything was worse okay okay that is one other research so this is 2019
research right 2016 research showed that on more days with more pollution huh test scores were worse a 2014 research in Israel showed that for their National exam called the Buu test which is probably similar to J I'm assuming or or whatever it is when the center was in a polluted location the average score at that Center was worse than the exam scores of students in centers with less pollution okay okay so uh see a lot of research I know that's a lot of research but okay now I have to bring out the big gun and I'm really sorry we recently did an episode on the null hypothesis on being Fooled by Randomness and we've been
talking about how sometimes there can be simpler explanations aumer hand lens Razer and stuff like that what is the possibility that there is a simpler explanation for this for example with with the highways uh could be that there is a time difference because no so you're right okay uh I mean how do you know it is not uh just correlation how is it causation and so on right uh there are two very important ways in which science does this right the gold standard is what is called a randomized controlled trial RCT yes RCT as in you break up your experimental subjects into two groups randomly okay they don't get to choose so this ensures that there is no uh
confounding Factor randomly you break it up into two groups one group is given Placebo and one group is given the experimental drug or whatever right correct so we do an RCT on pollution okay take pregnant women okay randomly assign half of them to live in a polluted place throughout their pregnancy and the other half live in a nice clean place and then we check whether the babies born uh in polluted places are dumber than the other babies seems ethically incredibly wrong you can't you can't put pregnant women in polluted areas and expect them to be ah okay fine we are doing research for science so you're right actually we can't do this this is illegal ethically
illegal pretty much anywhere in the world unethical illegal immoral all of them in fact that is some people call this one of the problems with RCS that you can't have RCs for the important stuff right but I'm glad our scientists the one who lives in less polluted areas are quite smart okay okay what did they do what did they do was that they look at natural changes which give you a u it's called a natural rcity in New Jersey right at tol nakas uh when an Easy Pass system was implemented right okay it is kind of like our fast tag but much better in fast tag you still have to stop there and wait until that thing
SC does it thing no there here the car just zips through you have to go a little slower but the system reads it so nobody stops okay okay so when that was implemented huh they did a before and after experiment on those locations okay what they did so before the cars had to stop pay the toll and then go so those areas there would be a lot of cars waiting there there would be a lot of congestion there would be a lot of pollution corre right whereas after Easy Pass all the congestion pollution went away correct okay Mak sense what they found was that the babies born just before okay versus the babies that were
born in that area in that area within less than uh 2 km from the to to boo right so what they found was that the Easy Pass system reduced premature births by 10% and low birth weights by 11% okay all right one more thing which helps scientists tell the difference between just correlation and caus is called the dose response curve right dose and as in the greater the dose the bigger should be the response right so in medicine if I give you double the medicine and um your temperature goes down by twice as much right then I know that this particular medicine is causing the temperature to go up and down right or whatever basically if there is a curve
where higher dose has more response we see that take that as evidence that this is caus CA and not correlation in case of the pregnant women living near the toll booth right uh the the the difference was much higher for women living closer to the toll booth and a little lower for women living a little further away so there was a dose of pollution which caused a specific response in women living near the tool booth and away from the tool booth and that was beyond 2 kilm there was no difference oh over the same time period so clearly moral of the story State 2 km away from any toll booths where cars are likely to stop and
create pollution correct well that's not the only moral of the story but clearly this wasn't a correlation this was definitely a causation and that was proven by a natural RCT caused by changing the toll booth from a manned toll booth to an easy pass or a faster kind of I can imagine you telling me that you're neither a premature baby nor a student in school why should you worry right so to 2016 paper which actually went into Office Buildings okay and did cognitive tests on people they made them solve problems and they saw that higher pollution Office Buildings resulted in lower scores on cognitive tests right so it affects people people in offices yeah okay uh see one of the arguments I can
give for that and of course I'm sure that the researchers did control for this variable uh is that higher pollution Office Buildings also mean that they are in higher populated areas which means the spread of your IQs is is extremely all over the place yeah you can't really blame and there are days when there is too much of you are saying that people who live in bigger cities are Dumber isn't that true though I mean just look at us except he's an exception and the exception always proves the rule so look at look at me bigger cities actually do an entire episode on the fact that exception proves the rule makes no sense that sentence makes
absolutely no sense okay thing you say no there's no such no thing you say okay either you say it because it makes sense otherwise you don't say it we'll do an episode on that you just wait okay okay for the moment let's assume that uh uh well not assume the scientists the researchers have proved that pollution does make you dumber it does cause an impact on your IQ and your health and whatnot Health definitely but uh what if any could be the longer effects like yeah so I mean I can imagine you saying that okay fine you know uh I am saying that you don't have to imagine me saying that I will uh spend some time in
pollution and I will get away and I will retire to the countryside and then become smart again right it doesn't work like that so uh they have done again you have to be smart first anyway go on less dumb so uh they did done studies on uh long-term exposure and I just mention a couple of studies okay uh so one is that a 2019 paper showed that for every 10 micrograms per met Cube increase in pollution okay right uh the chances of Alzheimer in old age increase by more than three times okay all right similar study in 2018 showed the chances for Parkinson's also go up okay a study of 20,000 elderly women showed that every 10
microgram uh per M Cube increase okay uh in the long-term exposure to PM 2.5 and pm10 is equivalent to aging by 2 years in terms of brain power in China a paper which just did analysis not an RCT kind of a study but just based on their analysis they believe that if people would move to a place with uh lesser pollution less pollution less than 50 uh microgram per M Cube that the median person would go from 50 percentile to 63 percentile in verbal scores and from 50 percentile to 58 percentile in math scores just by moving so moving away from a polluted uh Les than 50 aqi Place helps restore some of that lost IQ
restore some of that dumbness that has crep in yeah ooh interesting this you know what what this brings to mind is that work from home is actually useful for for everybody because people if they work from less polluted areas will actually be able to be more productive because their IQs are better their their reasoning is better they're they're not as dumb yeah so I should point out uh I mean generally if there is an anti principle in our episodes where you talk about the opposite and that I mean pollution does affect everybody at all times but to a large extent the impact is small okay it's not like you huge difference whereas there are other
aspects of the situation that might change social and sociological as so example right moving to a less polluted school will increase the scores if all other things are equal but if the polluted school has much better teachers then the pollution isn't going to fix that right a teacher has such a big impact yeah that small differences because of pollution won't change it right and that's something similar can be argued by all these CEOs who are saying that you need to come into office yeah uh coming into office is something that I uh I have strong opinions about I am but then again I'm living a freelance life uh for various other reasons what you're essentially
saying is there are a lot of confounding variables a lot of confounding factors that go into it yeah but big picture to keep in mind is again there are some studies the studies as an analysis which claim that a 10% increase in pollution reduces GDP of the country by around 1 percentage Point okay so this has impact on GDP this is you're talking about increase in pollution so uh it also depends on what the base GDP of the country is before the pollution increases and all of that like I said there are a lot of confounding variables we are should be talking about is decrease in pollution which will make the GDP go up yeah but decrease in
pollution for a country is another difficult Target to a etc etc all of that um what what bothers me is that we are assuming that the researchers have ensured that there are no confounding variables but in various examples that we just took there seem to be some confounding variables so I'm trying to figure out how much of this is uh an a direct a direct impact to me in my life so you are asking how do I what do I do with this information because essentially you are not running the country so you can't ruce the pollution what can you do right have we made a list of that shant let us see he always does okay
very dramatic of him but he always makes a list of what do I do yes so here are the things that should be considered you could consider right please uh one is if wherever you are staying if you stay a little away from the street in the same area but away from the street the pollution is going to decrease and the impact is going to decrease because there is a dose response uh curve there right yeah um another could be move to a place that reduces your commute because the amount of time you spend on the streets is one of the biggest factors right pollution inside your home is less than the pollution on the streets
reducing your commute and moving away from uh pollution is is very paradoxical unfortunately I'm giving bunch of possibilities okay not all of them will be applicable to you right another possibility is buy an air purifier for the home for the office okay I'm going to go and buy air purifier stocks now or plan your outdoor activities by figuring out the local aqi fluctuations right you know what are the peak hours I mean aqi is published by many cities uh now and you can see uh which time of the day has better aqi yeah plan your outdoor activities around that um right Pune has suffer I think which publishes II every day another thing is that pollution affects older
people much more so you know maybe do something to keep them extra protected right also uh does this mean that in polluted areas wearing these masks anti-pollution masks uh not n95s but whatever some anti-pollution masks is is a good idea I don't know that I tried looking up research on that and it seems mixed because you know reducing the pollution using mask has a beneficial effect but then also it makes uh I mean there is one paper showing that during Co when chess players had to wear a mask uh their performance went down right so there is mask have a negative effect also yeah but that could be the confounding variable of the Mask being a
for an object on the face which they're not used to for their games so it throws them off and again I some of these I'm not very sure of the confounding of of whether they've considered all confounding variables so I have some reservations but overall I can see that there is definitely correlation leaning towards causation of pollution making you dumber correct so basically what you are saying is that you would put kids in a school with less pollution and when you you it is time to pick a j Center you will pick one with less pollution right I did you can you pick a j Center I I didn't know that if if that is
possible then yes I definitely would but yeah again uh I would probably let the kid choose their J Center because sometimes having friends around is also an additional boost of confidence that is I think the important principle to keep in mind that the effects are small so you have to always keep track of counterbalancing things but pollution is every where it is going to be with you throughout your life so the small things all add up so which is why the longer term thing that he mentioned about Alzheimer's and Parkinson's that is something that we definitely need to think carefully about so yeah pollution is making you dumber and this becoming Dumber thing will affect you in the long
term so make a note of that Shri Kant naven future IQ thank you your future IQ is dependent on pollution I did mention that 6 to9 million people per year die early because of pollution there's a link here check it out there's lots of work done on this but I want to point out to you to keep this in mind every year the number of people who die because of terrorism is 25,000 war is 50,000 HIV AIDS is 680,000 murders is 470,000 the only two things that cross a million are Road accidents at 1.3 million and obesity at 2.8 million and pollution and pollution kills at least 6 million if not 10 wow thank you for watching till
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