Non-biological factors including air pollution and poverty could play a significant role in your child’s intelligence quotient (IQ) and according researchers have found that this toxic combination could lower the IQ of your kid.
According to findings of a new study, children born to mothers experiencing economic hardship, who were also exposed during pregnancy to high levels of PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), scored significantly lower on IQ tests at age 5 compared with children born to mothers with greater economic security and less exposure to the pollutants.
“The findings support policy interventions to reduce air pollution exposure in urban areas as well as programs to screen women early in pregnancy to identify those in need of psychological or material support,” said senior study author Frederica Perera from the Columbia University in the US.
PAH are ubiquitous in the environment from emissions from motor vehicles, oil, and coal-burning for home heating and power generation, tobacco smoke, and other combustion sources.
Material hardship is a measure used to assess an individual’s unmet basic needs with regard to food, clothing, and housing.
For the study, the researchers followed 276 mother-child pairs from pregnancy through early childhood in New York City.
The researchers used the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children to assess IQ.
Children of mothers who reported greater material hardship, and were exposed to high levels of PAH during pregnancy scored lower on tests of full scale IQ, perceptual reasoning, and working memory.
The study appeared in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology.
I don’t disagree that pollutants could have an effect on IQ, but is it possible that some with a lower IQ is more likely to be poor and therefore have a child with a lower IQ? So it’s not being poor that lowers your IQ, it’s having a lower IQ that leads to being poor.