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Smog in Our Brains: Gender Differences in the Impact of Exposure to Air Pollution on Cognitive Performance

TLDR
Examining variations in transitory and cumulative air pollution exposures for the same individuals over time in China finds that long-term exposure to air pollution impedes cognitive performance in verbal and math tests.
Abstract
While there is a large body of literature on the negative health effects of air pollution, there is much less written about its effects on cognitive performance for the whole population. This paper studies the effects of contemporaneous and cumulative exposure to air pollution on cognitive performance based on a nationally representative survey in China. By merging a longitudinal sample at the individual level with local air-quality data according to the exact dates and counties of interviews, we find that contemporaneous and cumulative exposure to air pollution impedes both verbal and math scores of survey subjects. Interestingly, the negative effect is stronger for men than for women. Specifically, the gender difference is more salient among the old and less educated in both verbal and math tests.

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Citations
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Air Pollution (Particulate Matter) Exposure and Associations with Depression, Anxiety, Bipolar, Psychosis and Suicide Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

TL;DR: The hypothesis of an association between long-term PM2.5 exposure and depression is supported and the limited literature and methodological challenges in this field, including heterogeneous outcome definitions, exposure assessment, and residual confounding, suggest further high-quality studies are warranted to investigate potentially causal associations between air pollution and poor mental health.
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Stronger policy required to substantially reduce deaths from PM2.5 pollution in China.

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References
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The Global Burden of Disease Due to Outdoor Air Pollution

TL;DR: Air pollution is associated with a broad spectrum of acute and chronic health effects, the nature of which may vary with the pollutant constituents, and particulate air pollution is consistently and independently related to the most serious effects, including lung cancer and other cardiopulmonary mortality.
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The Impact of Pollution on Worker Productivity

TL;DR: This paper finds robust evidence that ozone levels well below federal air quality standards have a significant impact on productivity: a 10 ppb decrease in ozone concentrations increases worker productivity by 4.2 percent.
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