Abstract
Concerns about children’s weight have steadily risen alongside the manufacture and use of myriad chemicals in the US. One class of chemicals, known as metabolic disruptors, interfere with human endocrine and metabolic functioning and are of specific concern to children’s health and development. This article examines the effect of residential concentrations of metabolic disrupting chemicals on children’s school performance for the first time. Census tract-level ambient concentrations for known metabolic disruptors come from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Air Toxics Assessment. Other measures were drawn from a survey of primary caretakers of 4th and 5th grade children in El Paso Independent School District (El Paso, TX, USA). A mediation model is employed to examine two hypothetical pathways through which the ambient level of metabolic disruptors at a child’s home might affect grade point average. Results indicate that concentrations of metabolic disruptors are statistically significantly associated with lower grade point averages directly and indirectly through body mass index. Findings from this study have practical implications for environmental justice research and chemical policy reform in the US.
Highlights
In recent years, environmental justice (EJ) researchers have examined the relationship between exposure to air toxics and children’s school performance at the level of the school [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The direct effect of known metabolic disruptors (MDs) (X) on grade point average (GPA) (Y) was negative and statistically significant (r = −0.0114, p = 0.03) and this effect was mediated by the indirect effect of body mass index (BMI) (M) on GPA (Y), which was negative and statistically significant (r = −0.1423, p < 0.01)
Because the relationship between X and M is significant and positive, higher levels of known MDs are associated with higher BMI
Summary
Environmental justice (EJ) researchers have examined the relationship between exposure to air toxics and children’s school performance at the level of the school [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] These studies have found a negative association between school-based exposure to air toxics and academic performance, usually measured as aggregated standardized test scores and/or rate of absenteeism. One of the first studies used United States Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data and 1990 census tract-level estimates of respiratory air toxics risk to predict standardized test scores in Los Angeles Unified School. District (LAUSD) schools [6] They found that air pollution levels at schools negatively and statistically significantly predicted standardized test scores, adjusting for school demographics.
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