3min snip

80,000 Hours Podcast cover image

#170 – Santosh Harish on how air pollution is responsible for ~12% of global deaths — and how to get that number down

80,000 Hours Podcast

NOTE

The Effects of Air Pollution on Cognitive Performance and Mental Health

Moving to the fields of Norway is said to provide clean air and better life expectancy. However, air pollution has been found to have negative effects on cognitive performance, mood, school and work performance, driving abilities, mental health, and productivity. Although there are numerous studies on this topic, it can be challenging to summarize the evidence. Some evidence suggests that air pollution harms productivity due to cognitive losses rather than just physical health issues. The magnitude of these impacts is still uncertain due to publication biases and uncertainties. However, research on the global burden of disease estimates shows consistent results across different parts of the world. While the body of work on cognitive and productivity effects is still growing, it aligns with the general direction. The exact magnitude is not yet known with certainty, so it is not currently factored into cost effectiveness calculations. Nevertheless, air pollution is likely harmful to cognition in addition to its impact on health.

00:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, if you want to breathe clear, clean air, you have to move to the fields of Norway. OK, so that's the classic kind of life expectancy issue. But there's this whole other cluster that's becoming more and more prominent, which is these effects on cognitive performance. And mood and things like that. So, yeah, I've read that there's a bunch of studies suggesting, as you were saying earlier, that it harms school performance to have polluted air, makes you do worse at school, makes you do worse at your work, makes you causes you to drive worse, make more mistakes, potentially also affects mental health, like makes people more likely to have depression or commit suicide and things like that. Is there any way of kind of summing up the evidence on that? Because at the moment, there's just so many different papers looking at specific different outcome measures. It's a little bit hard maybe to aggregate it into a simple picture for me.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I can give you my take, which is possibly sort of more skeptical than others, which is given that there is something like that there is a body of work that's emerging that seems to be pointing in a similar direction. There seems to be evidence to suggest that air pollution harms you and your productivity in a manner that is distinct from its harms on health. So it's not productivity that is getting harmed because you're falling sick more often, but productivity that is being harmed because of cognitive losses. So the magnitude of these impacts, I don't claim to be an expert on this stuff and in some sense, I'm a consumer of these results. And so the magnitude of these impacts, I suspect will still have significant uncertainties and sort of publication biases and things like that. In some sense, the reason I'm sort of more comfortable with the global burden of disease type estimates is that it reflects a larger body of work. And although the causal identification with some of these public health papers may not always be up to scratch, they're relatively transparent about what they do and don't. And there's just more papers from different parts of the world at different levels of pollution, which once again, which seemed to sort of back each other up. And I think on the cognitive and productivity stuff, it's still like a more nascent body of work, which is still pointing in the same general direction. But I just don't know if there has been enough of it. So probably harmful to your cognition in a manner different, sort of in addition to the impacts on your health and heart disease and lungs and so forth. My own sense is that we don't yet know the magnitude to the level of certainty that we would like. So for example, in our grant making, this isn't something that we actually factor into a cost effectiveness calculations. So far, it's been restricted to health impacts alone of prolonged exposure. And yeah, I imagine that will be the case in the foreseeable
Speaker 2
future.

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
App store bannerPlay store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode