A new study has found that people exposed to higher levels of fine particle air pollution (PM2.5) in childhood had lower economic gains in adulthood than those exposed to lower levels.
The research results were published in the scientific journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)last Monday (9). The studies were carried out by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the European University of Rome.
They were the first to investigate PM2.5 exposure and economic opportunity using granular census tract-level data and state-of-the-art methods to adjust for socioeconomic and demographic confounders.
To do this, the researchers analyzed data on PM2.5 exposure and economic earnings from 86 percent of all U.S. census tracts — small statistical subdivisions of a county — from 1980 to 2010. They focused on people born from 1978 to 1983, looking at their average earnings in 2014 to 2015, when they were between the ages of 31 and 37.
To measure economic mobility, they used a statistic called absolute upward mobility (AUM), defined as the average adulthood income rank of children born into families at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution.
The study found that the greater a person’s exposure to PM2.5 in childhood, the lower their earnings in adulthood . Across the U.S., on average, an increase in PM2.5 exposure of one microgram per cubic meter (μg/m3) in 1982 was associated with a 1,146% lower AUM in 2015. The study also found that PM2.5 exposure had an outsized impact on AUM in specific regions of the U.S., particularly in the Midwest and South.
“Our findings highlight the need to implement stringent air quality standards at the national level,” said co-lead author Luca Merlo, a researcher at the European University in Rome. “They also suggest the need for locally tailored interventions to mitigate air pollution and for integrated policies that address environmental and economic inequalities.”
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This content was originally published in Exposure to pollution in childhood can have economic impact in adulthood on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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