BY Brian Kates
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Monday, July 20th 2009, 8:13 AM


Schwartz for News
A study conducted in New York has linked lower IQ scores in 5-year-olds to prenatal pollution.

The five-year-old children of city mothers who regularly breathed in car- and truck-polluted air when they were pregnant scored significantly lower on IQ tests than kids with less exposure, a study released Monday found.

The 249 moms tested -- all from the South Bronx and upper Manhattan -- wore backpack air monitors for 48 hours during the last few months of pregnancy.

Their pre-schoolers scored four or five points lower on IQ tests than kids who were not exposed to pollution.

That's a big difference that could affect school performance, said Frederica Perera, director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health, who led the study.

The findings suggest that pre-natal exposure to air pollution could have the same harmful effects on brain development as lead exposure, and helps explain why inner city kids often do worse academically than wealthier youngsters, said Patrick Breysse, an environmental health specialist at Johns Hopkins' school of public health.

The study appeared in the August edition of Pediatrics.

Scientists said more study is needed to rule out the possibility that exposure to pollution after they were born contributed to the children's low scores.

The researchers said they plan to continuing monitoring and testing the children to learn whether school performance is affected and if there are any additional long-term effects.


Source:nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/07/20/2009-07-20_smog_lowers_kids_iqs_even_before_theyre_born_shows_new_york_study.html" target="_blank">http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/07/20/2009-07-20_smog_lowers_kids_iqs_even_before_theyre_born_shows_new_york_study.html

VERY interesting article.

Interesting but consider this ...

if their massive sample is '249 moms tested all from the South Bronx and upper Manhattan' how are they establishing that smog is the problem? because guess what most likely very many of these 249 moms in addition to breathing smog...

are poor

are not teaching their kids to read at home long before school starts

are not native English speakers

park their kids in front of SpongeBob and Dora day in and day out

I mean there is an entire field of variables that could be causing this discrepancy in scores, so I wonder in the study as published how these researchers established it was smog and not other factors. Also I wasn't aware we needed pediatric studies to 'explain why inner city kids often do worse academically than wealthier youngsters'



thanks for sharing A.

Good points but air quality has to have some type of affect on brain development. More research is defenitely needed and warranted. If this is indeed the case in can have serious implications on how maternity leave is allotted and what precautions should be taken by inner city mothers.