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Ambient air pollution associated with lower academic achievement among US children: A nationwide panel study of school districts
BACKGROUND: Ambient air pollution is an important environmental exposure and has been linked with impaired cognitive function. Few studies have investigated its impact on children’s academic performance on a nationwide level. We hypothesize that higher ambient air pollution concentrations will be as...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8663889/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34909554 http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/EE9.0000000000000174 |
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author | Lu, Wenxin Hackman, Daniel A. Schwartz, Joel |
author_facet | Lu, Wenxin Hackman, Daniel A. Schwartz, Joel |
author_sort | Lu, Wenxin |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Ambient air pollution is an important environmental exposure and has been linked with impaired cognitive function. Few studies have investigated its impact on children’s academic performance on a nationwide level. We hypothesize that higher ambient air pollution concentrations will be associated with lower average academic test scores. METHODS: We investigated three prevalent ambient air pollutants: PM(2.5), NO(2) and ozone, and their associations with the average academic test scores, at the Geographic School District (GSD) level, of the third to eighth grade students in the United States from 2010 to 2016. We applied multivariate linear regression and controlled for urbanicity, socioeconomic status, student racial/ethnic compositions, and individual intercepts for each district-grade level and each year. RESULTS: We found that an interquartile range increase in PM(2.5) concentrations was associated with a 0.007 (95% confidence interval: 0.005, 0.009) SD lower average math test scores, and a 0.004 (95% confidence interval: 0.002, 0.005) SD lower average English language/arts test scores. Similar associations were observed for NO(2) and ozone on math, and for NO(2) on English language/arts. The magnitudes of these associations are equivalent to the effects of short-term reductions of thousands of dollars in district median household income. The reductions in test scores were larger for GSDs with higher socioeconomic status, though most associations remained negative at all socioeconomic levels. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that ambient air pollution within a GSD is associated with lower academic performance among children. Further improving air quality may benefit children’s overall academic achievement and socioeconomic attainment across the lifespan. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8663889 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-86638892021-12-13 Ambient air pollution associated with lower academic achievement among US children: A nationwide panel study of school districts Lu, Wenxin Hackman, Daniel A. Schwartz, Joel Environ Epidemiol Original Research Article BACKGROUND: Ambient air pollution is an important environmental exposure and has been linked with impaired cognitive function. Few studies have investigated its impact on children’s academic performance on a nationwide level. We hypothesize that higher ambient air pollution concentrations will be associated with lower average academic test scores. METHODS: We investigated three prevalent ambient air pollutants: PM(2.5), NO(2) and ozone, and their associations with the average academic test scores, at the Geographic School District (GSD) level, of the third to eighth grade students in the United States from 2010 to 2016. We applied multivariate linear regression and controlled for urbanicity, socioeconomic status, student racial/ethnic compositions, and individual intercepts for each district-grade level and each year. RESULTS: We found that an interquartile range increase in PM(2.5) concentrations was associated with a 0.007 (95% confidence interval: 0.005, 0.009) SD lower average math test scores, and a 0.004 (95% confidence interval: 0.002, 0.005) SD lower average English language/arts test scores. Similar associations were observed for NO(2) and ozone on math, and for NO(2) on English language/arts. The magnitudes of these associations are equivalent to the effects of short-term reductions of thousands of dollars in district median household income. The reductions in test scores were larger for GSDs with higher socioeconomic status, though most associations remained negative at all socioeconomic levels. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that ambient air pollution within a GSD is associated with lower academic performance among children. Further improving air quality may benefit children’s overall academic achievement and socioeconomic attainment across the lifespan. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins 2021-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC8663889/ /pubmed/34909554 http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/EE9.0000000000000174 Text en Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of The Environmental Epidemiology. All rights reserved. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) , where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal. |
spellingShingle | Original Research Article Lu, Wenxin Hackman, Daniel A. Schwartz, Joel Ambient air pollution associated with lower academic achievement among US children: A nationwide panel study of school districts |
title | Ambient air pollution associated with lower academic achievement among US children: A nationwide panel study of school districts |
title_full | Ambient air pollution associated with lower academic achievement among US children: A nationwide panel study of school districts |
title_fullStr | Ambient air pollution associated with lower academic achievement among US children: A nationwide panel study of school districts |
title_full_unstemmed | Ambient air pollution associated with lower academic achievement among US children: A nationwide panel study of school districts |
title_short | Ambient air pollution associated with lower academic achievement among US children: A nationwide panel study of school districts |
title_sort | ambient air pollution associated with lower academic achievement among us children: a nationwide panel study of school districts |
topic | Original Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8663889/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34909554 http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/EE9.0000000000000174 |
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