Does Pollution Make You Dumber? (And Other Questions About Exposure To Particulate Matter.)

Most people other than Andrew Wheeler and the Trump Administration Clean Air Science Advisory Committee know that exposure even to low levels of PM2.5 causes increased morbidity and mortality.  And now comes evidence that exposure to PM2.5 may adversely impact cognitive capacity as well.  If the evidence is correct, then the externalities created by activities that release PM2.5 are likely much more significant than we had realized, shifting the cost/benefit analysis even further towards more stringent regulation of particulate exposure.

The recent work is summarized in a fascinating new episode of Freakonomics Radio.  The episode is not just about the impacts of PM2.5 on cognition.  It also includes a discussion of what could be considered early environmental justice impacts of industrialization.  Over the course of the 19^th Century, as coal combustion increased dramatically, population shifts occurred, with the result being that, by the end of the 19^th Centur