The air in New York City has gotten a lot cleaner over the past few decades, and children are smarter for it.
That’s according to a recent study published by researchers at Columbia University who followed more than a thousand children between 1998 and 2020, testing their cognitive development from around age 1 until they turned 3.
During that period, clean air and climate policies substantially reduced local air pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and the fine particulate matter known as PM2.5. When mothers breathed cleaner air during pregnancy, their toddlers’ scores on mental development tests later trended upward.
As city policies limiting pollution from vehicles and buildings took effect between 1998 and 2016, local concentrations of PM2.5 fell by about 32 percent. Nitrogen dioxide, which worsens conditions like asthma, followed a similar trend. When air quality improved, so did toddlers’ cognitive development: At 3, the group of children born most recently averaged about 26 percent higher on a benchmarking test than the children born before climate rules took effect.
Not all that improvement can be attributed to better air quality. But even after adjusting for factors like parental age, education levels and the presence of smokers in the household, the results showed a significant relationship between air quality and cognitive development in early childhood.
“This long-term, community-based research has generated new evidence that policies to clean the air and address climate change are beneficial to children’s brains,” said Frederica Perera, a special research scientist and professor emerita at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, who led the study.
It can be difficult to measure local health effects of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Dr. Perera said, and that makes it challenging to link regional climate policies directly with positive health outcomes. But by studying pollutants that are emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes alongside planet-warming carbon, researchers are making the case that climate policies can have measurable effects on human health.
A study that came out last month, for example, found that a strict anti-traffic policy rolled out in London in 2019 resulted in improved lung health for children living within a low-emissions zone.
Similar zones in Paris and Sweden have been linked to lower childhood asthma rates, as has a congestion-pricing policy in Stockholm. (New York City’s own congestion-pricing policy, which charges drivers a fee for entering parts of Manhattan, has not had much of an impact on air quality. This is not entirely bad news: Many feared the measure would send more truck traffic into the Bronx, worsening pollution there.)
In China, Dr. Perera worked on a study that tracked women who were pregnant before and after the closure of a coal-burning power plant. Toddlers born after the shutdown performed better in cognitive development tests than children born while it was running. Similar research in the United States tracked local E.R. visits after the closure of a nearby coal plant and found that neighbors experienced lung-health benefits the researchers compared to quitting smoking.
As the evidence piles up that climate policies can be health policies, some hope that the findings will energize new groups of voters in support of emissions-reduction rules. After Dr. Perera’s team published early findings about links between New York City air quality and children’s developmental and respiratory health, Michael Bloomberg, who was mayor at the time, told them that their findings had encouraged action by the city government.
“We have some good news in various places, and community-based research studies are very powerful in accelerating policy change,” Dr. Perera said.
The Make America Healthy Again movement has recently turned its attention to coal, sending a letter to President Trump expressing concerns that the White House’s support for the fuel could lead to negative health outcomes.
Despite the fresh attention, coal consumption ticked upward in the United States last year after years of decline.
Our very uncomfortable summer: It wasn’t just the heat
Wildfires. Smoke. Ticks. Algae. Summer isn’t what it used to be.
Extreme weather is pushing up temperatures, making storms more intense and contributing to disasters around the world, from raging wildfires in Indonesia to the recent glacier collapse in Nepal.
But it’s affecting us in smaller ways, too. Around the United States this summer, once-cherished routines have become sources of discomfort, anxiety and dread. Here’s how climate change played a part in a summer that often felt itchy, sweaty and a little foreboding. — David Gelles
More from the web
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China’s oil consumption dropped by 9 percent from April through June as the Iran war disrupted supply, according to Inside Climate News. The drop could accelerate the country’s pivot away from fossil fuels.
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When ocean temperatures rise, so do rates of child malnutrition, a study reported by Grist found.
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Even in Britain’s cloudiest regions, households could save more than 400 pounds, or about $540, per year on their energy bills by installing rooftop solar panels, according to research reported by The Guardian.
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