So much bad air affects children's intelligence.
Children who grow up in an environment of air pollution will have on average a 4.5 points lower performance on IQ tests than children who have breathed clean air.
This according to a study by Kimberly Gray of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the United States.
If children are exposed to air filled with car exhaust or cigarette smoke before they start school is hampered brain development, and it is no small deterioration involved.
- For each child, if it's not your own, a 5 points lower IQ results did not seem so much, "says Bruce Lanphear, pediatric epidemologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada. But set against the U.S. population have changed a lot.
- But a decrease of 5 points per IQ test means that 3.5 million more children will achieve the criteria for mental retardation, explains Lanphear, according
