Productivity and Prenatal Health

AP carried an interesting story on a study that compared children’s IQ levels at age five with their level of prenatal pollution exposure, and found that children with higher exposures scored an average of four to five points lower than others in the study. The public health and other researchers quoted in the article viewed the findings as ground breaking — “there may be more dangers from typical urban air pollution than previously thought,” one remarked — but perhaps they shouldn’t be (though the researchers did come up with an ingenious method — the pollution detection device worn as a backpack — to gather their data on prenatal pollution exposure). A few maverick researchers (as well as many cranks and quacks, of course) have been sounding these kinds of warnings for decades. This particular study is longitudinal, meaning that they’ll continue to follow and compare the children’s academic performance and other behavioral and developmental measures, which could get really interesting.

What strikes us about the study’s findings is that it confirms one of the basic tenets of economics, that there ain’t no free lunch. Hydrocarbon emitting technologies have done wonders for the productivity, health, and leisure of modern societies — which means they almost certainly come with a cost. While people have known about the environmental and political impacts of fossil fuel consumption for decades, the biological impacts on human bodies are just now becoming more apparent, it seems, and they could go well beyond a decline in IQ. We’re not Luddites, in fact we’re very pro-technology, but we readily admit that all societies face the challenge of how to optimally share the gains and losses of new (and existing) technologies, and how to appropriately manage the externalities and asymmetries they create.

URLs:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090720/ap_on_he_me/us_med_pollution_iq

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0879836385?ie=UTF8&tag=symmetrycapit-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0879836385

http://www.quackwatch.org/