Urban Air Pollutants Can Damage IQs before Baby's First Breath

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=urban-air-pollutants-can-damage-iqs-before-babys-first-breath

by jacquesm • 16 years ago

13 12 16 years ago

scientificamerican.com

ars4• 16 years ago

Why do they call them fossil fuels? They are hydrocarbons.

If I burn plant derived ethanol the same hazards exist.

The term "fossil fuel" should be made obsolete.

Alex3917• 16 years ago

"If I burn plant derived ethanol the same hazards exist."

You are claiming that burning alcohol releases fine particulates?

ars4• 16 years ago

Of course. Why wouldn't it?

Remember you are not burning it with a nice flame, you are exploding it. You don't always have complete combustion.

And fine particulates are not the only hazard, there is also ozone which is catalyzed by VOC in the air, and ethanol is a VOC.

You also get NOx which is caused simply by high temperatures in an engine, and ethanol is no different.

lutorm2• 16 years ago

Yeah. About the only thing you don't get from ethanol compared to hydrocarbons is... volatile hydrocarbons, and of course (unsunk) CO2.

The combustion outputs are quantitatively different, but the same compounds are present. Whether ethanol produces cleaner combustion products compared to gasoline is debated in the literature.

Of course, when it comes to particulates, things like diesel or bunker oil are much worse than either gasoline or ethanol.

lutorm2• 16 years ago

They are called "fossil fuels" to distinguish whether their combustion increases the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (on timescales less than tens of thousands of years). That's a pretty important distinction to keep track of...

ars4• 16 years ago

Except that this article is about pollution, not CO2.

And if you are talking about CO2 there are better ways.

evilduck• 16 years ago

We use fossil to mean old regarding water too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_water

adzp• 16 years ago

Why are people voting this up? This article makes no mention of a control group and many factors can contribute to low iq. I am basically echoing several comments made on the article itself because they are valid.

ars4• 16 years ago

Is it me, or has the quality of Scientific American gone down significantly in the last year?

This is not the first article with problems like this I've read there. Maybe it's just the blog postings?

jacobolus• 16 years ago

“Instead, she tries to empower herself. She avoids walking through exhaust, doesn’t use pesticides, buys organic foods, shuts her windows to keep air pollution outdoors and uses air filters in her home.”

Does it seem to anyone else like maybe this woman should move somewhere else, instead of trying to isolate her house from its immediate surroundings?

As for the study, isn’t it likely that IQs of children from different parts of a city are likely to be shaped by many factors other than just air quality?

fleitz• 16 years ago

No kidding especially when you consider that in the Northern Hemisphere because of prevailing winds the poor half of the city lives on the east side which is where the pollution blows, and it's been shown many times that IQ correlates well with income.

maukdaddy• 16 years ago

Even worse:

A lot of household items are made from chemicals that off-gas. Shutting your home might actually make the indoor air quality WORSE than if you opened windows to ventilate.

See: http://www.epa.gov/iaq/

Urban Air Pollutants Can Damage IQs before Baby's First Breath

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