Hazardous air pollutants are associated with worse performance in reading, math, and science among US primary schoolchildren

Abstract

Emerging evidence demonstrates that chronic exposure to air pollution may negatively impact children's cognitive processing and memory. Little is currently known about how air pollution impacts individual children's academic performance through time. Academic performance is practically important, given its linkage to children's future life course trajectories. Individual-level, longitudinal data from 16,000 US primary school students are combined with a tract-level hazardous air pollutant (HAP) measure to assess how kindergarten exposures are associated with competencies in reading, math and science through third grade. We employed linear mixed models with repeated measures within children (e.g., five math tests across four years), clustering within census tracts, and random effects specified at the child- and census tract-levels. Controlling for a comprehensive list of time variant and time invariant covariates, we found statistically significant associations between higher levels of HAPs and lower reading (b = −0.02; p < 0.05), math (b = −0.02; p < 0.001), and science (b = −0.05; p < 0.001) scores. These negative effects of pollution on academic competency in the early primary school years add to the weight of evidence that air pollution harms children's academic potential.