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Air Pollution and Criminal Activity: Microgeographic Evidence from Chicago
Abstract
A growing literature documents that air pollution adversely impacts health, productivity, and cognition. This paper provides the first evidence of a causal link between air pollution and aggressive behavior, as documented by violent crime. Using the geolocation of crimes in Chicago from 2001–2012, we compare crime upwind and downwind of major highways on days when wind blows orthogonally to the road. Consistent with research linking pollution to aggression, we find that air pollution increases violent crime on the downwind sides of interstates. Our results suggest that pollution may reduce welfare and affect behavior through a wider set of channels than previously considered. (JEL K42, Q53)
... Environmental pollution-the classic negative externalityposes a considerable risk to human well-being and economic livelihoods. Air pollution leads to poor health (Chen et al., 2013;Dockery et al., 1993;Pope et al., 2002;Seaton et al., 1995) and adverse economic outcomes such as reduced worker productivity, lower income, higher conflict incidence, and criminal activity (Adetutu et al., 2023;Binder & Neumayer, 2005;Herrnstadt et al., 2021;Maddison, 2005;Samakovlis et al., 2005;Zivin & Neidell, 2012). ...
... 4 See Zhao (2020) and https://www.partnerre.com/opinions_research/poor-air-qualityan-emerging-risk-factor-for-life-insurance-underwriting-and-pricing/. 5 See Chang et al. (2018) and ance. 6 Furthermore, such aggregate air pollution measures are inadequate for capturing the variation in pollution concentration, considering that a significant gradient of pollutants can exist within short distances and small spatial dimensions (Borck & Tabuchi, 2019;Herrnstadt et al., 2021;Zhou & Levy, 2007). ...
... Furthermore, we tackle the endogeneity of pollution risk arising from individuals' residential choices by similarly exploiting the variation in 1 km-by-1 km wind and precipitation to instrument for variation in local pollution levels. Following recent studies (Herrnstadt et al., 2021;Schlenker & Walker, 2016), our identification strategy exploits how the spatial diffusion of environmental pollutants is driven mainly by meteorological processes such as wind velocity and wet deposition (e.g., precipitation) over a given location. This approach enables us to address the panel identification issues relating to omitted variables correlated with pollution risk and insurance demand. ...
Recent research documents that exposure to air pollution can trigger various behavioral reactions. This article presents novel empirical evidence on the causal effect of pollution risk on life insurance decisions. We create a unique dataset by linking microgeographic air quality information to the confidential UK Wealth and Assets Survey. We identify an inverse N‐shape relationship between pollution risk and life insurance adoption by exploiting the orthogonal variations in meteorological conditions. Over a given range above a threshold of exposure, rising pollution is associated with rising demand for life insurance, whereas at lower than the threshold levels of pollution, higher exposure risk reduces demand for insurance. Our findings indicate—for the first time—a nonlinear relationship between local pollution risk and life insurance demand.
... Zhang et al. (2017) and Chen et al. (2018) find an effect of air pollution on mental health based on stated evidence (i.e., survey data) in China. 2012; Hanna and Oliva, 2015;Chang et al., 2016;Borgschulte et al., 2018;Chang et al., 2019), reduced cognitive performance (e.g., Sanders, 2012;Ebenstein et al., 2016;Bishop et al., 2018), increased criminal activities (e.g., Burkhardt et al., 2019;Bondy et al., 2020;Herrnstadt et al., 2021), and inflated road accidents (e.g., Sager, 2019). ...
... A large body of meteorological literature has shown that wind direction and speed are strong predictors of local pollutant concentrations (e.g., Chaloulakou et al., 2003;Kukkonen et al., 2005;Karner et al., 2010). Based on this scientific evidence, a growing number of studies in the economics literature exploit variation in local wind as the driver for air pollution (e.g., Moeltner et al., 2013;Schlenker and Walker, 2016;Keiser et al., 2018;Deryugina et al., 2019;Bondy et al., 2020;Anderson, 2020;Herrnstadt et al., 2021). ...
... For instance, Zhang (2019) found that higher wind velocities cause higher atmospheric motion that induces the diffusion, dilution, and accumulation of pollutants. Economic research also shows that wind direction matters for the diffusion of pollution over space (Deryugina et al., 2019;Herrnstadt et al., 2021). Even the economics textbook treatment of location-based pollution recognises these geophysical forces as core determinants of pollution concentration, as depicted in Fig. 2 (Perman et al., 2003). ...
... These processes are represented by the arrows in the diagram's top corner, which show that pollution diffusion in each receptor is determined by its distance from pollution sources (length of arrows), elevation above the emission sources (gradient of arrows), the direction and velocity of the transport vehicles (direction of arrows). Thus, Empirical economic studies frequently use these geophysical properties as instruments to model the diffusion of local pollution (e.g., Chen et al., 2020;Deryugina et al., 2019;Herrnstadt et al., 2021;Schlenker & Walker, 2016). ...
This study investigates how local air quality influences UK Parliament members’ votes on environmental and climate change legislation. Using micro-spatial information at the 1 km-by-1 km grid level, I link local air quality to members of UK parliament (MPs') voting records from 2009 to 2019. I find compelling evidence that MPs representing highly polluted areas are more likely to vote against stringent environmental legislation. I also provide evidence that local political economy considerations constrain pro-environmental voting behaviour: industrialization exacerbates the negative relationship between pollution and pro-environmental voting behaviour by further discouraging MPs representing industrial areas from supporting stringent environmental legislations. These findings underscore the public choice trade-offs between enacting stringent climate change policies and preserving local industry and jobs.
... Therefore, we decided to directly inquire about individuals' recent unethical behaviors rather than relying on reported crime statistics. Unlike studies based on city-level crime arrest data (Herrnstadt et al., 2021;Lu et al., 2018), our questionnaire-based study allows us to consider three types of unethical behaviors: (1) crimes such as prostitution, rape, child abuse, and domestic violence, which people may be hesitant to disclose; (2) acts such as theft and pilferage, which may not always result in criminal charges; and (3) acts such as racial and gender discrimination, which may not be illegal everywhere but are nonetheless malicious. As a result, our definition of unethical behavior includes a range of malicious acts beyond strictly criminal behavior. ...
... Differences in air pollutants are important, and we anticipate that the potential mechanisms influencing unethical behavior may vary depending on the type of pollutant. For example, related studies (Herrnstadt et al., 2021;Jones, 2022) also suggest that air pollution may affect serotonin levels in the brain, potentially leading to unethical behavior. Serotonin, a neurotransmitter, plays an important role in emotion regulation during social decision-making (Crockett et al., 2008). ...
This study aimed to investigate whether global air pollution harms human morals beyond physiological and psychological health. To accomplish this, we conducted an original survey involving over 80,000 individuals across 30 countries, inquiring about their recent perceived unethical behaviors. Through regression analyses, we identified global evidence of a positive correlation between local monthly average concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and perceptions of unethical behavior. This finding suggests that air pollution may potentially elicit unethical behavior through a complex response mechanism. It is noteworthy that the impact of air pollution on the inclination to perceive unethical behavior is heterogeneous across categories of unethical behavior and countries. For example, the effects of increasing air pollution concentrations vary even within the same European country: an increase in NO2 concentration in Greece and the Netherlands augments the inclination to perceive fatal unethical behaviors such as murder, terrorism, and suicide, while in Germany, NO2 concentration diminishes the inclination to perceive the same types of unethical behaviors. Overall, the societal costs of air pollution may be even more far-reaching than previously acknowledged, and further research is necessary to unveil the intricate response mechanisms underlying this issue.
... There has also been considerable research on health and cognitive effects of air pollution, both in long-term exposure (Chay and Greenstone 2003;Anderson 2020) and on short-term variation (Deryugina et al. 2019;Di et al. 2017;Schlenker and Walker 2016;Ebenstein et al. 2016;Herrnstadt et al. 2021). While these estimates are useful, they often are focused on the effects of a single pollutant. ...
... 8 For example, using atmospheric temperature inversions as a source of exogenous variation in air pollution, Sager (2019) finds a small and statistically significant increase in vehicle accidents due to increased PM2.5 levels. Similarly,Herrnstadt et al. (2021) establishes a link between air pollution and criminal activ-Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved. ...
Using daily variation in wind power generation in the western portion of Texas, we show that the resulting lower fossil fuel generation in the eastern portion of the state leads to air-quality improvements and, subsequently, to fewer emergency department (ED) visits. Spatially, the impact on pollution is widespread, but wind energy reduces ED admission rates more in zip codes closer to coal plants. Using intra-day wind generation and electricity pricing data, we find that more wind generation coming from hours when congestion on the electricity grid is less leads to higher reductions in emissions from east Texas power plants and PM2.5 concentrations and ED admission rates in east Texas. Comparing wind generation effects across low-demand night hours to higher-demand day hours, more NOX and SO2 is offset by wind from night hours, but the time-dependent effects for PM2.5 concentrations and ED admission rates is much weaker, potentially due to differences in exposure.
... To address these issues, we construct instruments by exploiting the spatial spillovers of air pollutants due to their transportability. As recognized in the recent literature on assessing the causal impact of air pollution (Anderson, 2019;Barwick et al., 2018;Deryugina et al., 2019;Freeman et al., 2019;Herrnstadt & Muehlegger, 2015), wind direction serves as a major determinant of region of influence for air pollution. In light of this, we use daily wind direction and a major pollution source in the city to construct an instrument for air pollution. ...
... Herrnstadt and Muehlegger (2015),Anderson (2019),and Freeman et al. (2019) use the nearest major highways or thermal power plants as their pollution sources and wind direction to construct IVs for air pollution. In addition,Deryugina et al. (2019) instrument for air pollution using daily wind direction without identifying a specific source of air pollution.2 ...
Besides medical expenses, hospitalizations associated with air pollution will incur the welfare loss due to activity restrictions and the wage loss due to inability to work. We fill in the gap in the literature by examining the impact of air pollution on volume and intensity of hospitalizations, which allows us to incorporate the welfare loss and the wage loss. Using a data set that covers most of the inpatients in a major Chinese city during 2015‐16, we find that worse air quality causes more hospital admissions, more total inpatient days, and higher total inpatient expenditure for various diseases, particularly diseases of the respiratory and circulatory systems. We also find that there would be an underestimate of the loss from air pollution if we had ignored the loss associated with activity restrictions and the wage loss during hospitalization.
... Its staggered implementation across states creates a natural experiment and enables a clear distinction between treated and control firms, supporting casual inference. Despite its conclusion in 2008, recent studies continue to use NBP data to examine regulatory effects on corporate financial policies (Dang et al., 2023(Dang et al., , 2024, and broader socioeconomic outcomes (Herrnstadt et al., 2021). By exploring how firms adjust their financial reporting in response to regulatory shocks, this study contributes to both the emerging literature on financial impacts of climate policy compliance and the well-established literature on earnings management. ...
... Air pollution also increases the probability of dementia diagnoses (20), adversely affects mood, mental health, social engagement, and subjective well-being (21), and can increase preferences for unhealthy foods (22). Poor air quality can also lead to an increase in urban violent crime incidents (23). ...
This study examines the impact of air pollution on food away from home (FAFH) consumption in 52 cities across 20 provinces of China, focusing on expenditures for online food delivery (online FAFH) and dine-in restaurants (offline FAFH). Using unique daily aggregated city-level consumption data linked with hourly air quality data, we employ both semiparametric and parametric models to uncover a positive relationship between PM2.5 levels and online FAFH, contrasted by a significantly negative relationship with offline FAFH. Our analysis reveals that shifts in consumer demand for food services on polluted days, coupled with changes in urban mobility patterns, contribute to these outcomes. We also detect temporal variations based on meal type, enhancing our understanding of how air pollution influences food consumption behavior. The findings indicate that increased PM2.5 levels lead to a net loss in restaurant revenue, a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and an increase in plastic waste. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the multifaceted impacts of air pollution on FAFH and corresponding economy and environmental implications.
... Project Description: According to Herrnstadt et al. (2021), air pollution can alter people's cognition and lead to higher violent crime rates. As Baltimore City has one of the highest crime rates in the United States, the project examines whether the same conclusion can be established. ...
In response to the growing demand for undergraduate research experiences in economics, the FIRE Sustainability Analytics program offers a compelling solution. This program provides a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) in empirical environmental economics for first-year students at the University of Maryland (UMD). This paper outlines the program’s instructional design, highlights its role in advancing students’ higher-order economic proficiencies, discusses the institutional support behind the program, describes its research projects and their outcomes, and shares insights gained from nine years of program implementation.
... Trees may block traffic-related air pollutants and noise, so there is evidence that tree canopy cover is negatively associated with regional medical costs (Michelle C Kondo et al., 2020). This is important for crime prevention, since higher levels of air pollutants and noise may be associated with more aggressive behaviour (Herrnstadt et al., 2021). Grassland was found to provide residents with a large open space for physical activity and social contact, which may increase neighbourhood social cohesion and reduce conflicts as well as anti-social behaviour (Kemperman and Timmermans, 2014;Samsudin et al., 2022). ...
... We also extended the model in a two-stage regression framework (SMILE-2) to assess the causal effects of air pollution on the phenome, which is conceptualized in Supplementary Fig. 4. We use wind speed and direction as instrumental variables 24 . Wind speed and direction have previously been used as instrumental variables for various pollution exposures [25][26][27][28] . They are unlikely to have any direct causal effect on a disease phenotype, but are strong predictors of local pollution levels, as the pollution level in a given location is a mixture of locally produced and transported air pollution by the wind from its original source 28,29 . ...
Large national-level electronic health record (EHR) datasets offer new opportunities for disentangling the role of genes and environment through deep phenotype information and approximate pedigree structures. Here we use the approximate geographical locations of patients as a proxy for spatially correlated community-level environmental risk factors. We develop a spatial mixed linear effect (SMILE) model that incorporates both genetics and environmental contribution. We extract EHR and geographical locations from 257,620 nuclear families and compile 1083 disease outcome measurements from the MarketScan dataset. We augment the EHR with publicly available environmental data, including levels of particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), climate, and sociodemographic data. We refine the estimates of genetic heritability and quantify community-level environmental contributions. We also use wind speed and direction as instrumental variables to assess the causal effects of air pollution. In total, we find PM2.5 or NO2 have statistically significant causal effects on 135 diseases, including respiratory, musculoskeletal, digestive, metabolic, and sleep disorders, where PM2.5 and NO2 tend to affect biologically distinct disease categories. These analyses showcase several robust strategies for jointly modeling genetic and environmental effects on disease risk using large EHR datasets and will benefit upcoming biobank studies in the era of precision medicine.
... Farzanegan et al. [9] highlight that air pollution may cause population movements, utilizing concepts from urban comfort and migration theories. Furthermore, studies indicate that air pollution can incite criminal and unethical behaviors by impacting mental states, drawing from criminal psychology and environmental influences on behavior [10,11]. Additionally, the impact of air pollution on micro-firms has been explored, particularly how they navigate the complex, fluctuating external economic landscape. ...
Urban air quality is inextricably linked to the operations of micro-firms. This paper employs the “Qinling-Huaihe” River demarcation as an instrumental variable to construct a regression discontinuity design (RDD) coupled with the two-stage least squares (2SLS) approach. This methodological framework is utilized to investigate the influence of urban air quality on the corporate total factor productivity (CTFP) of publicly listed manufacturing firms from 2015 to 2020. Drawing on the broken windows theory of urban decay and the general equilibrium theory, this research elucidates a significant adverse effect of urban air pollution on CTFP. We rigorously confirm the validity of the RDD by conducting covariate continuity tests and manipulating distributional variables. Furthermore, the robustness of the baseline regression outcomes is substantiated through a series of sensitivity, robustness, and endogeneity checks, employing alternative instrumental variables. The analysis extends to examining the heterogeneity across environmental attributes, regional features, and green branding. The mechanistic investigation reveals that public environmental concerns, financing constraints, and investments in technological innovation serve as mediators in the nexus between urban air pollution and CTFP. Additionally, it is observed that environmental regulation exerts a positive moderating influence, whereas female leadership has a negative impact in this context. The imperative for timely environmental governance is underscored by these findings, which offer crucial insights for policymakers seeking to refine business environment strategies and for corporations aiming to pursue sustainable growth.
... 38 and 39, there is limited evidence of an effect on high-stakes decisions. Perhaps the most compelling evidence is provided by studies on specific groups such as stock traders (6,7,(40)(41)(42), chess players (43,44), baseball umpires (45), or criminals (46)(47)(48). Although these studies point to systematic impacts on decision-making, there is scant evidence of air pollution affecting decision-making in the population at large. ...
This paper studies the effect of air pollution on voting outcomes. We use data from 60 federal and state elections in Germany from 2000 to 2018 and exploit plausibly exogenous fluctuations in ambient air pollution within counties across election dates. Higher air pollution on election day shifts votes away from incumbent parties and toward opposition parties. An increase in the concentration of particulate matter (PM10) by 10 μ g/m 3 —around two within-county SDs—reduces the vote share of incumbent parties by two percentage points, which is equivalent to 4% of the mean vote share. We generalize these findings by documenting similar effects with data from a weekly opinion poll and a large-scale panel survey. We provide further evidence that poor air quality leads to more negative emotions such as anger, worry, and unhappiness, which, in turn, may reduce the support for the political status quo. Overall, these results suggest that poor air quality affects decision-making in the population at large, including consequential political decisions.
... The psychosocial costs of vegetation fire smoke are non-trivial as air pollution can have significant economic impacts, especially in high-stakes environments such as tests, investments, courtrooms, and sports games. 7 Our article also contributes to a broader literature that examines how cross-boundary pollution affects various outcomes, such as health (Miller et al., 2017;Deryugina et al., 2019;Jia and Ku, 2019;He et al., 2020;Burke et al., 2021;Heft-Neal et al., 2022), human capital and cognition (Almond et al., 2009;Graff Zivin et al., 2020;Lai et al., 2021), labor market (Black et al., 2019), firm productivity (Fu et al., 2022), and other critical outcomes (e.g., Herrnstadt et al., 2021). ...
This paper examines the impact of transboundary vegetation fire smoke on the real-time sentiment of Twitter users in Southeast Asia, including countries such as Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. We leverage the exogenous variation in wind directions for identification. We find that an increase in upwind fires by one standard deviation reduces the sentiment score by 0.5 percent of a standard deviation (after netting out the impact of unobserved local socioeconomic factors). During peak fire seasons, our estimate translates into sentiment damages comparable to the average Sunday-to-Monday sentiment drop. The adverse sentiment impact exhibits significant variation across countries and intensifies with factors such as the number of upwind fires, income levels, proximity to fires, and limited adaptability on weekdays. We show that cross-boundary air pollution is the primary channel, with smoke from neighboring countries exerting a greater impact on sentiment than domestically produced smoke. These findings underscore the psychosocial costs and geopolitical tensions associated with cross-border air pollution spillovers.
... Similar evidence is reported by Lu et al. (2018) using a 9-year panel of 9,360 U.S. cities. The evidence of a causal link between air pollution and violent crimes is provided by Herrnstadt et al. (2021) using the data of Chicago from 2001 to 2012. A multilevel analysis by Cruz et al. (2022) in 109 US cities asserts a positive effect of carbon monoxide concentration on interpersonal violence. ...
Addressing interpersonal violence and environmental pollution as a global health crisis has expanded dramatically after the UN’s post-2015 Action Agenda for Sustainable Development. This study investigates the asymmetric effects of environmental pollution, economic development, population growth, and unemployment on interpersonal violence across 24 OECD countries over the period 2000–2017 after controlling for human capital, health expenditures, government quality, and alcohol consumption. After confirming that the data are not uniformly distributed, panel quantile regression is employed. The results show that the effect of target variables on interpersonal violence varies across different quantile points. Environmental pollution and population growth appeared to be up-pulling determinants of interpersonal violence while economic growth and unemployment decrease interpersonal violence, especially at the higher quantiles of the distribution. For robustness checks, we further disaggregated interpersonal violence into physical (by the sharp object and by the firearm) and sexual violence. The findings are similar for physical violence, but a negative effect of air pollution on sexual violence is observed. Based on the estimated results, appropriate policy implications are reported to address interpersonal violence issues.
... Air pollution poses a major threat to human health and well-being (1,2). Long recognized for its impacts on physical health, air pollution exposure has also been linked to altered emotional states, impaired cognitive functioning, aggressive behavior, and lost productivity (3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8). These findings suggest that air pollution exposure could harm mental health, either directly through brain inflammation and oxidative stress (9,10) or indirectly through economic or other physical hardship. ...
Air pollution poses well-established risks to physical health, but little is known about its effects on mental health. We study the relationship between wildfire smoke exposure and suicide risk in the United States in 2007 to 2019 using data on all deaths by suicide and satellite-based measures of wildfire smoke and ambient fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) concentrations. We identify the causal effects of wildfire smoke pollution on suicide by relating year-over-year fluctuations in county-level monthly smoke exposure to fluctuations in suicide rates and compare the effects across local areas and demographic groups that differ considerably in their baseline suicide risk. In rural counties, an additional day of smoke increases monthly mean PM 2.5 by 0.41 μg/m ³ and suicide deaths by 0.11 per million residents, such that a 1-μg/m ³ (13%) increase in monthly wildfire-derived fine particulate matter leads to 0.27 additional suicide deaths per million residents (a 2.0% increase). These effects are concentrated among demographic groups with both high baseline suicide risk and high exposure to outdoor air: men, working-age adults, non-Hispanic Whites, and adults with no college education. By contrast, we find no evidence that smoke pollution increases suicide risk among any urban demographic group. This study provides large-scale evidence that air pollution elevates the risk of suicide, disproportionately so among rural populations.
... The corresponding causal estimate from the control function approach demonstrates that its impacts are even more substantial at 7.41%. Although our results stand contrary to previous studies looking at the influence of contaminated air on judicial decisions (see Hou and Wang 2020), they are in line with a selection of articles suggesting a positive relationship between air pollution, aggression, anxiety, or the likelihood of punishing others (Herrnstadt et al. 2016;Younan et al. 2018;Burkhardt et al. 2019;Bondy et al. 2020;Herrnstadt et al. 2021). ...
This study explores the relationship between air pollution and judicial rulings. Although environmental factors should not affect judicial decisions, realists contend that there is substantial room for external factors to transpire into sentencing and sway human reasoning. We hypothesize that air pollution is one of these factors. Using Poisson panel models and instrumental variable techniques, we show that exposure leads to more convictions. We posit that this effect occurs because the impact of exposure on the central nervous system changes the cognitive performance and empathy of judges. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that decreasing average air pollution in India by one standard deviation would lead to up to 145,000 fewer convictions regarding currently active cases.
... Thus Burkhardt et al. (2019) report evidence that exposure to PM 2.5 increases violent crimes at the county level while Jones (2022) finds strong evidence that dust storm activity is associated with violent crimes also at the county level in the US. Herrnstadt et al. (2021) find similar results for the City of Chicago using PM 10 exposure. Kuo and Putra (2021) (New South Wales, Australia) and Bondy et al. (2020) (London, England) also report positive impacts of air pollution on crime. ...
Excessive nighttime light is known to have detrimental effects on health and on the environment (fauna and flora). The paper investigates the link between nighttime light pollution and economic growth, air pollution, and urban density. We propose a county model of consumption which accounts for spatial interactions. The model naturally leads to a dynamic general nesting spatial model with unknown common factors. The model is estimated with data for 3071 continental US counties from 2012-2019 using a quasi-maximum likelihood estimator. Short run and long run county marginal effects emphasize the importance of spillover effects on radiance levels. Counties with high levels of radiance are less sensitive to additional growth than low-level counties. This has implications for policies that have been proposed to curtail nighttime light pollution.
... Air pollution negatively influences mental well-being, which is likely to increase crime rates. The spectrum of criminal behaviors linked to this occurrence could span from violent crimes to spontaneous transgressions (Herrnstadt, Heyes, Muehlegger, & Saberian, 2021). Further, the rise in crime rates will escalate the direct and indirect costs of conducting business, such as security expenses, migration of skilled individuals, reduced consumer demand, and diminished trust, invoking harmful norms of reciprocity (Awaworyi Churchill, Hayward, Smyth, & Trinh, 2023). ...
We investigate the effect of exposure to air pollution on entrepreneurship using panel data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. To address endogeneity arising from location choices and omitted variable bias, we employ a two-way fixed effects model with an instrumental variable approach. We find that adults exposed to high levels of air pollution are unlikely to become employer entrepreneurs or have diversified household entrepreneurial ac- tivities. Specifically, a one unit increase in air pollution leads to a decrease in the propensity for entrepreneurship by 1.6 percentage points and a decrease in the likelihood of household entre- preneurial diversity by 2.1 percentage points. We find that risk propensity, networking con- sumption, self-efficacy, and the city’s highly educated migrants are the main channels through which air pollution impacts entrepreneurship. Our findings also reveal that air pollution has a more significant negative impact on individuals with lower education levels compared to their more educated counterparts.
Policies geared toward environmental and economic improvement could unexpectedly lead to negative consequences in other dimensions. Such cases raise a red flag to economists and policymakers who aim to deliver comprehensive and sensible policy evaluations. This article investigates antisocial behaviors in response to the Clean Winter Heating Policy (CWHP), which seeks to improve outdoor air quality. Our results show that participating villagers are more likely to violate laws to burn agricultural waste and exhibit lower prosociality in incentivized dictator games and public goods games. We further explore treatment heterogeneities and find that two channels are likely to play a part. First, the CWHP was perceived as a negative income shock. Therefore, the villagers would want to reduce their expenditure on straw disposal and behave less generously in the incentivized games. Second, the CWHP could trigger discontent and directly affect social preference. Additional evidence suggests that the antisocial (less prosocial) responses could have been avoided by granting larger upfront subsidies.
This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, behavioral economics and decision analysis.
Funding: J. Cao gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72243007 and 72250064] and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China [Grant 2023YFE0112900]. T. X. Liu gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72222005 and 72342032]. R. Ma gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72134006 and 72304272]. A. Sun gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72373157], Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the Research Funds of Renmin University of China [Grant 22XNA003]. The authors are also thankful for the support from the Energy Foundation, China Southern Power Grid Co., Ltd., Research Center for Green Economy and Sustainable Development and Institute for Global Development of Tsinghua University, and the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy and Environment.
Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01459 .
We investigate the impact of Typhoon Lekima, a source of environmental uncertainty, on delivery performance, utilizing data from RiRiShun Logistics. We apply a staggered difference‐in‐differences model across low‐complexity and high‐complexity supply chains. The analysis uncovers distinct dynamics throughout the typhoon's forecast, active, and recovery phases. Notably, the active phase experiences less disruption in delivery performance compared to the forecast phase, owing to RiRiShun's wait‐and‐see policy. This approach leads to order accumulation but subsequently enables more effective resource allocation. In the recovery phase, high‐complexity supply chains demonstrate significant improvements, surpassing pre‐disaster performance levels. The study further emphasizes the critical role of two response mechanisms in managing high‐complexity supply chains. Increasing throughput efficiencies at destination centers and implementing transfer centers prove effective in enhancing delivery performance during both the forecast and active phases. However, the simultaneous application of these response mechanisms during the forecast phase unexpectedly reduces performance.
China's new-type urbanization surfaces as a pivotal strategic framework in urban development during the new era in China, enhancing urban competitiveness through high-quality economic, social, ecological, and other dimensions. Nonetheless, the societal implications of new-type urbanization policy on crime suppression, in other words, its role in fortifying urban security competitiveness, have been scarcely scrutinized. Considering social stability stands as the cornerstone for cities to sustain long-term competitiveness, to elucidate the impact of new-type urbanization on social stability, we evaluate the causal effect of new-type urbanization policies on regional crime and its mechanism by employing employed data from 209 prefecture-level cities in China spanning the period from 2014 to 2021 and utilizing a time-varying difference-indifferences model. Additionally, a moderation effect model and simple slope analysis are utilized to discern the mechanism that influences the effectiveness of these policies. The findings indicate that the new-type urbanization policy significantly suppresses crime, demonstrating a crime-reducing effect. Considering endogeneity problems, sample selection bias, and interference from random factors, a series of robustness tests, such as establishing urbanization levels in China based on nighttime lights, confirm its high robustness. Furthermore, the crime-reducing effect of the new-type urbanization policy primarily manifests in the eastern regions. Taking PM2.5 as an example, air pollution could weaken the crime-reducing effect of the new-type urbanization policy. Finally, it would contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the societal policy implications of China's new-type urbanization in crime control. It would also offer valuable insights for fostering improving urban security competitiveness through inclusive and sustainable urbanization in developing countries.
Purpose
This research is aimed to examine how environmental pollution affects consumers' preference for self-improvement products.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a series of three experimental studies, this research substantiates our hypotheses by employing various manipulations of environmental pollution and examining different types of self-improvement products.
Findings
The research demonstrates that environmental pollution enhances consumers' preference for self-improvement products via the mediation of perceived environmental responsibility. And the effect is negatively moderated by social equity sensitivity.
Originality/value
The recurrent incidence of environmental pollution has elicited significant concern among the general public and academic scholars. An overwhelming majority of research examining the impact of pollution on consumer behavior has concentrated on its influence on environmentally friendly and healthy consumption patterns. Nevertheless, the current research proposes that pollution fosters a preference for products associated with self-improvement, mediated by perceived environmental responsibility, with the effects being moderated by social equity sensitivity.
Rapid response to emergency calls for service is among the most widely adopted crime prevention strategies used by police today while practitioners, policy makers, and researchers differ on its crime prevention efficacy. Using observational research designs to examine the relationship between rapid response and crime can give the appearance that faster response times lead to more crime because larger law enforcement agencies often allocate greater patrol resources to areas with greater crime counts. An instrumental variable approach is one research design solution to this research problem. Using a pair of instruments based on characteristics of beat boundaries and counts of adjoining beats, we find average response times are unrelated to the frequency of reported violent crimes. However, we also find that quicker rapid response is tied to fewer reported property crimes, specifically burglaries and motor vehicle thefts, with additional findings suggesting incapacitation is the mechanism behind the differences.
This study delves into the influence of traffic-related pollution on respiratory diseases within the United States. While prior research has established a connection between air pollution and mortality or morbidity in sensitive age groups, this association has been predominantly observed in highly polluted areas, particularly in California. In this paper, we extend this line of investigation by examining adult patients with asthma symptoms across various metropolitan areas throughout the country. To address potential endogeneity concerns in our empirical framework, we adopt highway density as an instrumental variable (IV) for NO 2 concentrations. This approach allows us to gain a more robust understanding of the relationship between traffic-related pollution and respiratory health outcomes. Our findings indicate that NO 2 does not have a significant impact on patients with asthma symptoms in the overall sample. However, we observed that it can exacerbate asthma conditions in patients residing in warm areas. A back-of-the-envelope calculation estimates a $6.758 billion economic loss due to increasing asthma attack on adults in the selected study area. This regional disparity outside of California underscores the necessity for adjusting current regulations on vehicle emissions based on unique regional characteristics. Such adjustments could help mitigate adverse health effects associated with traffic-related pollution in different parts of the United States.
This paper investigates the psychological effects from stock market returns. Using an FBI database of over 55 million daily reported crime incidents across the United States, crime is proposed as a measure of psychological well-being. The evidence suggests that stock returns affect the well-being of not only investors but also noninvestors. Specifically, a contemporaneous negative (positive) relationship between daily stock market returns and violent crime rates is found for investors (noninvestors). A similar relationship is also found between local earnings surprises and violent crime. The contrasting relationships for investors and noninvestors suggests that relative wealth may influence well-being.
Recent evidence suggests that exposure to air pollution adversely impacts health outcomes, cognitive function, and labor productivity, however, less is known about the effect of air pollution exposure on social conflicts. Using daily air pollution, we study the effect of exposure to air pollution on social conflicts. For identification strategies, we estimate models with high-dimensional fixed effects and two instrumental variables using atmospheric inversions and wind patterns as exogenous shocks to local pollution. Our findings suggest a positive impact of air pollution on social conflicts, and the magnitude is larger with more severe pollution exposure. Moreover, the significant differences exist between social conflicts occurring in different workplaces, and those occurring at development levels, both of which are related to the extent of pollution exposure. Finally, taking lottery sales as a proxy for risk preference to investigate the potential mechanisms, we show that the increased social conflicts alone with pollution exposure may be attributed to the rising risk preference. This provides indirect support for a plausible channel through which air pollution results in behavioral and social outcomes. The results are robust to alternative specifications and placebos. The findings suggest that reducing air pollution gains the unintended consequence of preventing social conflicts.
Cities today are confronting never before seen challenges to their pole position on top of the economic hierarchy. In this chapter, we lay out four challenges, past and future, that cities today face and identify policies that can help address the problems we identify. The common theme throughout is that cities, their residents, and their business leaders need to embrace a dynamic ethos and be given a freer hand to reposition their municipalities to face a future that is shaping up to be quite different than the past.KeywordsZoningInfrastructureHousingPopulation agingJEL CodesR11R42R58J10
Air pollution is a serious problem worldwide, and migration for environmental reasons has been emphasized. However, data deficiencies have limited research on the links between air quality and intercity migration. Based on Baidu migration big data of cross-city mobility information, an extended gravity model was built to examine the effects of air quality (PM2.5) on intercity migration. Results showed that air pollution significantly reduces immigration into cities but does not significantly encourage emigration. A 10% increase in air pollution leads to 3.78% and 11.08% decreases in the net and total inflows of the urban population, respectively. Specifically, air quality had a greater influence on the migration of central and northeastern cities and small- and medium-sized or middle-income cities. Influences of the Yangtze River and Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration, two very large and important urban clusters in China, were significantly higher than those of other areas. Air pollution did not significantly drive people to flee from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, which involves, in contrast to the expected situation, people choosing to stay in first-tier cities in China. Those findings are informative for environmental as well as migration policymakers to focus on the heterogeneous nexus between the impacts of policies that is depending on the characteristics of cities.
Examined the influence of ambient temperature upon physical aggression. In Exp I, with 35 undergraduates, Ss received either a positive or negative evaluation from a confederate and were then provided with an opportunity to aggress against this person by means of electric shock. On the basis of previous research, it was predicted that high ambient temperatures (92-95 Deg.F) would facilitate aggression by those receiving positive evaluations but actually inhibit such behavior by those receiving negative assessments. Results confirm both predictions and also indicate that more moderate but still uncomfortably warm temperatures (82-85 Deg.F) produced similar effects. Exp II, with 64 male undergraduates, employed procedures similar to Exp I and examined the suggestion that administration of a cooling drink would reduce the impact of high ambient temperatures upon overt aggression. This prediction, too, was confirmed. The possible mediating role of negative affect with respect to the influence of ambient temperature and other environmental factors upon aggression is discussed. (19 ref)
Air pollution is a serious problem that affects billions of people globally. Although the environmental and health costs of air pollution are well known, the present research investigates its ethical costs. We propose that air pollution can increase criminal and unethical behavior by increasing anxiety. Analyses of a 9-year panel of 9,360 U.S. cities found that air pollution predicted six major categories of crime; these analyses accounted for a comprehensive set of control variables (e.g., city and year fixed effects, population, law enforcement) and survived various robustness checks (e.g., balanced panel, nonparametric bootstrapped standard errors). Three subsequent experiments involving American and Indian participants established the causal effect of psychologically experiencing a polluted (vs. clean) environment on unethical behavior. Consistent with our theoretical perspective, results revealed that anxiety mediated this effect. Air pollution not only corrupts people’s health, but also can contaminate their morality.
12 adult male and 12 female Wistar albino rats were used to measure the levels of the serum follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), the luteinizing hormone (LH), the estradiol (E-2) and the progesterone in female rats, as well as the FSH, the LH and the testosterone in male rats, following 8-hour daily inhalation exposure to gasoline vapours for 6 weeks, to assess the effect of the vapours on the reproductive integrity of experimental animals. The results showed that the levels of serum FSH and LH obtained for female rats in the test group (3.48 +/- 0.03 and 19.97 +/- 1.20mIU/ml, respectively) were insignificantly lower (p > 0.05), compared respectively to the levels obtained for female rats in the control group (3.62 +/- 0.12 and 20.06 +/- 0.23mIU/ml, respectively), whereas the levels of serum estradiol and progesterone obtained for female rats in the test group (25.02 +/- 2.32pg/ml and 0.18 +/- 0.02mg/ml, respectively) were significantly lower (p < 0.05), compared respectively to the levels obtained for female rats in the control group (39.84 +/- 3.64pg/ml and 0.33 +/- 0.02mg/ml, respectively). On the other band, the levels of serum FSH and LH obtained for male rats in the test group (2.87 +/- 0.21 and 3.09 +/- 0.32mIU/ml, respectively) were insignificantly higher (p > 0.05), compared to the levels obtained for male rats in the control group (2.75 +/- 0.14 and 2.93 +/- 0.12mIU/ml, respectively). At the same time, the level of serum testosterone in the male test rats (7.82 +/- 2.17ng/dl) was significantly higher (p < 0.05), compared to the level in the male control rats 4.66 +/- 1.85ng/gl. The results of this study showed that the adverse effect of inhalation exposure to gasoline fumes on the reproductive integrity in rats is sex-dependent, with the females being more vulnerable.
Neuroscientists are now discovering how hormones and brain chemicals shape social behavior, opening potential avenues for pharmacological manipulation of ethical values. Here, we review recent studies showing how altering brain chemistry can alter moral judgment and behavior, focusing in particular on the neuromodulator serotonin and its role in shaping values related to harm and fairness. We synthesize previous findings and consider the potential mechanisms through which serotonin could increase the aversion to harming others. We present a process model whereby serotonin influences social behavior by shifting social preferences in the positive direction, enhancing the value people place on others’ outcomes. This model may explain previous findings relating serotonin function to prosocial behavior, and makes new predictions regarding how serotonin may influence the neural computation of value in social contexts.
Abstract The World Health Organization identified urban outdoor air pollution as the eighth highest mortality risk factor in high-income countries. Exposure to ambient pollutants such as ozone (O3) increases the number of hospital admissions. O3 is a highly reactive gas that reacts with cells lining the airways, producing the formation of reactive oxygen species and inflammation. Beyond the respiratory system, O3 exposure also produces fatigue, lethargy, headaches, and significant decrease in rapid-eye-movement sleep related to an increase in slow-wave sleep. Interestingly, these sleep changes can be significantly mitigated by treatment with indomethacin, which suggests that an inflammatory mechanism may be responsible for these neurological symptoms. To characterize the inflammatory mechanisms by which O3 affects tissues outside the pulmonary system, we evaluated inflammatory factors in both lung and brain. Rats exposed to 1 part per million O3 for 1, 3 or 6 h, as well as rats exposed daily for 1 or 3 h over five consecutive days, showed increases in TNF-α and IL-6 levels within the lungs as well as increases in TNF-α, IL-6, NF-κB p50 and GFAP levels in the cerebral cortex. These results support the hypothesis that the neuroinflammatory response may be responsible for the central nervous system effects of O3 exposure.
Ozone, a pervasive environmental pollutant, adversely affects functional lung growth in children. Animal studies demonstrate that altered lung development is associated with modified signaling within the airway epithelial mesenchymal trophic unit, including mediators that can change nerve growth. We hypothesized that ozone exposure alters the normal pattern of serotonin, its transporter (5-HTT) and two key receptors (5-HT2A and 5-HT4); a pathway involved in postnatal airway neural, epithelial and immune processes. We exposed monkeys to acute or episodic ozone during the first 2 or 6 months of life. There were 3 exposure groups/age: 1) filtered air (FA), 2) acute ozone challenge (AO), and 3) episodic ozone+acute ozone challenge (EAO). Lungs were prepared for compartment-specific qRT-PCR, immunohistochemistry and stereology. Airway epithelial serotonin immunopositive staining increased in all exposure groups with the most prominent in 2 mo midlevel and 6 mo distal airways. Gene expression of 5-HTT, 5-HT2AR and 5-HT4R increased in an age dependent manner. Overall expression was greater in distal compared to midlevel airways. Ozone exposure disrupted both 5-HT2AR and 5-HT4R protein expression in airways and enhanced immunopositive staining for 5-HT2AR (2 mo) and 5-HT4R (6 mo) on smooth muscle. Ozone exposure increases serotonin in airway epithelium regardless of airway level, age and exposure history; and changes the spatial pattern of serotonin receptor protein (5-HT2A, 5-HT4) and 5-HTT gene expression depending on compartment, age and exposure history. Understanding how serotonin modulates components of reversible airway obstruction exacerbated by ozone exposure sets the foundation for developing clinically relevant therapies for airway disease.
Humans are willing to incur personal costs to punish others who violate social norms. Such "costly punishment" is an important force for sustaining human cooperation, but the causal neurobiological determinants of punishment decisions remain unclear. Using a combination of behavioral, pharmacological, and neuroimaging techniques, we show that manipulating the serotonin system in humans alters costly punishment decisions by modulating responses to fairness and retaliation in the striatum. Following dietary depletion of the serotonin precursor tryptophan, participants were more likely to punish those who treated them unfairly, and were slower to accept fair exchanges. Neuroimaging data revealed activations in the ventral and dorsal striatum that were associated with fairness and punishment, respectively. Depletion simultaneously reduced ventral striatal responses to fairness and increased dorsal striatal responses during punishment, an effect that predicted its influence on punishment behavior. Finally, we provide behavioral evidence that serotonin modulates specific retaliation, rather than general norm enforcement: depleted participants were more likely to punish unfair behavior directed toward themselves, but not unfair behavior directed toward others. Our findings demonstrate that serotonin modulates social value processing in the striatum, producing context-dependent effects on social behavior.
The authors hypothesized that relations between temperature and assaults are stronger during evening hours than during other hours of the day and tested this hypothesis by obtaining 3-hr measures of assaults, temperature, and other weather variables for a 2-year interval. The hypothesis was confirmed by autoregression analyses that controlled for secular trends, seasonal differences, other weather variables, holidays, and other calendar events. In addition, as predicted by the negative affect escape model, assaults declined after reaching a peak at moderately high temperatures. The inverted U-shaped relation survived tests that controlled for secular trends, seasonality, autocorrelation, outliers, and heteroscedasticity. In addition, consistent with routine activity theory, moderator-variable regression analyses indicated that relations were strongest during evening hours and on weekends. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Research on human aggression has progressed to a point at which a unifying framework is needed. Major domain-limited theories of aggression include cognitive neoassociation, social learning, social interaction, script, and excitation transfer theories. Using the general aggression model (GAM), this review posits cognition, affect, and arousal to mediate the effects of situational and personological variables on aggression. The review also organizes recent theories of the development and persistence of aggressive personality. Personality is conceptualized as a set of stable knowledge structures that individuals use to interpret events in their social world and to guide their behavior. In addition to organizing what is already known about human aggression, this review, using the GAM framework, also serves the heuristic function of suggesting what research is needed to fill in theoretical gaps and can be used to create and test interventions for reducing aggression.
Although the effect of air pollution on various diseases has been extensively investigated, few studies have examined its effect on depression.
We investigated the effect of air pollution on symptoms of depression in an elderly population.
We enrolled 537 participants in the study who regularly visited a community center for the elderly located in Seoul, Korea. The Korean version of the Geriatric Depression Scale-Short Form (SGDS-K) was used to evaluate depressive symptomatology during a 3-year follow-up study. We associated ambient air pollutants with SGDS-K results using generalized estimating equations (GEE). We also conducted a factor analysis with items on the SGDS-K to determine which symptoms were associated with air pollution.
SGDS-K scores were positively associated with interquartile range (IQR) increases in the 3-day moving average concentration of particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter ≤ 10 μm (PM10) [17.0% increase in SGDS-K score, 95% confidence interval (CI): 4.9%, 30.5%], the 0-7 day moving average of nitrogen dioxide [NO2; 32.8% (95% CI: 12.6%, 56.6%)], and the 3-day moving average of ozone [O3; 43.7% (95% CI: 11.5%, 85.2%)]. For these three pollutants, factor analysis showed that air pollution was more strongly associated with emotional symptoms such as feeling happy and satisfied than with somatic or affective symptoms.
Our study suggests that increases in PM10, NO2, and O3 may increase depressive symptoms among the elderly. Of the symptoms evaluated, ambient air pollution was most strongly associated with emotional symptoms.
It has been proposed that changes in global climate have been responsible for episodes of widespread violence and even the collapse of civilizations. Yet previous studies have not shown that violence can be attributed to the global climate, only that random weather events might be correlated with conflict in some cases. Here we directly associate planetary-scale climate changes with global patterns of civil conflict by examining the dominant interannual mode of the modern climate, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Historians have argued that ENSO may have driven global patterns of civil conflict in the distant past, a hypothesis that we extend to the modern era and test quantitatively. Using data from 1950 to 2004, we show that the probability of new civil conflicts arising throughout the tropics doubles during El Niño years relative to La Niña years. This result, which indicates that ENSO may have had a role in 21% of all civil conflicts since 1950, is the first demonstration that the stability of modern societies relates strongly to the global climate.
Air pollution is linked to central nervous system disease, but the mechanisms responsible are poorly understood.
Here, we sought to address the brain-region-specific effects of diesel exhaust (DE) and key cellular mechanisms underlying DE-induced microglia activation, neuroinflammation, and dopaminergic (DA) neurotoxicity.
Rats were exposed to DE (2.0, 0.5, and 0 mg/m3) by inhalation over 4 weeks or as a single intratracheal administration of DE particles (DEP; 20 mg/kg). Primary neuron-glia cultures and the HAPI (highly aggressively proliferating immortalized) microglial cell line were used to explore cellular mechanisms.
Rats exposed to DE by inhalation demonstrated elevated levels of whole-brain IL-6 (interleukin-6) protein, nitrated proteins, and IBA-1 (ionized calcium-binding adaptor molecule 1) protein (microglial marker), indicating generalized neuroinflammation. Analysis by brain region revealed that DE increased TNFα (tumor necrosis factor-α), IL-1β, IL-6, MIP-1α (macrophage inflammatory protein-1α) RAGE (receptor for advanced glycation end products), fractalkine, and the IBA-1 microglial marker in most regions tested, with the midbrain showing the greatest DE response. Intratracheal administration of DEP increased microglial IBA-1 staining in the substantia nigra and elevated both serum and whole-brain TNFα at 6 hr posttreatment. Although DEP alone failed to cause the production of cytokines and chemokines, DEP (5 μg/mL) pretreatment followed by lipopolysaccharide (2.5 ng/mL) in vitro synergistically amplified nitric oxide production, TNFα release, and DA neurotoxicity. Pretreatment with fractalkine (50 pg/mL) in vitro ameliorated DEP (50 μg/mL)-induced microglial hydrogen peroxide production and DA neurotoxicity.
Together, these findings reveal complex, interacting mechanisms responsible for how air pollution may cause neuroinflammation and DA neurotoxicity.
It is standard practice in empirical work to allow for clustering in the error covariance matrix if the explanatory variables of interest vary at a more aggregate level than the units of observation. Often, however, the structure of the error covariance matrix is more complex, with correlations varying in magnitude within clusters, and not vanishing between clusters. Here we explore the implications of such correlations for the actual and estimated precision of least squares estimators. We show that with equal sized clusters, if the covariate of interest is randomly assigned at the cluster level, only accounting for non-zero covariances at the cluster level, and ignoring correlations between clusters, leads to valid standard errors and confidence intervals. However, in many cases this may not suffice. For example, state policies exhibit substantial spatial correlations. As a result, ignoring spatial correlations in outcomes beyond that accounted for by the clustering at the state level, may well bias standard errors. We illustrate our findings using the 5% public use census data. Based on these results we recommend researchers assess the extent of spatial correlations in explanatory variables beyond state level clustering, and if such correlations are present, take into account spatial correlations beyond the clustering correlations typically accounted for.
Combustion-derived nanoparticles, such as diesel engine exhaust particles, have been implicated in the adverse health effects of particulate air pollution. Recent studies suggest that inhaled nanoparticles may also reach and/or affect the brain. The aim of our study was to comparatively evaluate the effects of short-term diesel engine exhaust (DEE) inhalation exposure on rat brain and lung. After 4 or 18 h recovery from a 2 h nose-only exposure to DEE (1.9 mg/m(3)), the mRNA expressions of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), and cytochrome P450 1A1 (CYP1A1) were investigated in lung as well as in pituitary gland, hypothalamus, olfactory bulb, olfactory tubercles, cerebral cortex, and cerebellum. HO-1 protein expression in brain was investigated by immunohistochemistry and ELISA. In the lung, 4 h post-exposure, CYP1A1 and iNOS mRNA levels were increased, while 18 h post-exposure HO-1 was increased. In the pituitary at 4 h post-exposure, both CYP1A1 and HO-1 were increased; HO-1 was also elevated in the olfactory tuberculum at this time point. At 18 h post-exposure, increased expression of HO-1 and COX-2 was observed in cerebral cortex and cerebellum, respectively. Induction of HO-1 protein was not observed after DEE exposure. Bronchoalveolar lavage analysis of inflammatory cell influx, TNF-alpha, and IL-6 indicated that the mRNA expression changes occurred in the absence of lung inflammation. Our study shows that a single, short-term inhalation exposure to DEE triggers region-specific gene expression changes in rat brain to an extent comparable to those observed in the lung.
Armed conflict within nations has had disastrous humanitarian consequences throughout much of the world. Here we undertake the first comprehensive examination of the potential impact of global climate change on armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. We find strong historical linkages between civil war and temperature in Africa, with warmer years leading to significant increases in the likelihood of war. When combined with climate model projections of future temperature trends, this historical response to temperature suggests a roughly 54% increase in armed conflict incidence by 2030, or an additional 393,000 battle deaths if future wars are as deadly as recent wars. Our results suggest an urgent need to reform African governments' and foreign aid donors' policies to deal with rising temperatures.
Archival data covering a 2-year period were obtained from three sources in order to assess relations among ozone levels, nine measures of meteorological conditions, day of the week, holidays, seasonal trends, family disturbances, and assaults against persons. Confirming results obtained in laboratory studies, more family disturbances were recorded when ozone levels were high than when they were low. Two-stage regression analyses indicated that disturbances and assaults against persons were also positively correlated with daily temperatures and negatively correlated with wind speed and levels of humidity. Further, distributed lag (Box-Jenkins) analyses indicated that high temperatures and low winds preceded violent episodes, which occurred more often on dry than humid days. In addition to hypothesized relations, it was also found that assaults follow complaints about family disturbances, which suggests that the latter could be used to predict and lessen physical violence. It was concluded that atmospheric conditions and violent episodes are not only correlated but also appear to be linked in a causal fashion. This conclusion, however, was qualified by a discussion of the limitations of archival data and concomitant time-series analysis.
Examined the relationship between 4,025 visits to a psychiatric emergency room and meteorological variables for the summer months across 2 consecutive years. Weather involving low barometric pressure and high cloud cover was significantly related to emergency-room visits for depression, and air pollution was correlated with schizophrenia and total visits. (16 ref)
This paper reveals how exposure to noise pollution increases violent crime. To identify the causal effect of noise pollution, I use daily variation in aircraft landing approaches to instrument noise levels. Increasing background noise by 4.1 decibels causes a 6.6% increase in the violent crime rate. The additional crimes mostly consist of physical assaults on men. The results imply a substantial societal burden from noise pollution beyond health impacts.
There is strong evidence that short-run fluctuations in air pollution negatively impact infant health and contemporaneous adult health, but there is less evidence on the causal link between long-term exposure to air pollution and increased adult mortality. This project estimates the impact of long-term exposure to air pollution on mortality by leveraging quasi-random variation in pollution levels generated by wind patterns near major highways. I combine geocoded data on the residence of every decedent in Los Angeles over three years, high-frequency wind data, and Census short form data. Using these data, I estimate the effect of downwind exposure to highway-generated pollutants on the age-specific mortality rate by using orientation to the nearest major highway as an instrument for pollution exposure. I find that doubling the percentage of time spent downwind of a highway increases mortality among individuals 75 or older by 3.8%–6.5%. These estimates are robust and imply significant loss of life years.
We estimate the effect of short-term air pollution exposure (PM2.5 and ozone) on several categories of crime, with a particular emphasis on aggressive behavior. To identify this relationship, we combine detailed daily data on crime, air pollution, and weather for an eight-year period across the United States. Our primary identification strategy employs extremely high dimensional fixed effects and we perform a series of robustness checks to address confounding variation between temperature and air pollution. We find a robust positive effect of increased air pollution on violent crimes, and specifically assaults, but no relationship between increases in air pollution and property crimes. The effects are present in and out of the home, at levels well below Ambient Air Pollution Standards, and PM2.5 effects are strongest at lower temperatures. The results suggest that a 10% reduction in daily PM2.5 and ozone could save $1.4 billion in crime costs per year, a previously overlooked cost associated with pollution.
We investigate the effect of pollution on worker productivity in the service sector by focusing on two call centers in China. Using precise measures of each worker's daily output linked to daily measures of pollution and meteorology, we find that higher levels of air pollution decrease worker productivity. These results manifest themselves at levels of pollution commonly found in large cities throughout the developing and developed world.
We provide the first evidence that short-term exposure to air pollution affects the work performance of a group of highly skilled, quality-focused employees. We repeatedly observe the decision making of individual professional baseball umpires, quasi-randomly assigned to varying air quality across time and space. Unique characteristics of this setting combined with high-frequency data disentangle effects of multiple pollutants and identify previously underexplored acute effects. We find that a 1 ppm increase in 3-hour CO causes an 11.5% increase in the propensity of umpires to make incorrect calls and a 10 μg/m³ increase in 12-hour PM2.5 causes a 2.6% increase. We control carefully for a variety of potential confounders, and results are supported by robustness and falsification checks. Our estimates imply that a 3% reduction in productive output is associated with a change in CO concentrations equivalent to moving from the 25th to the 95th percentile of the CO distribution in many of the largest US cities.
All individuals rely on a fundamental set of mental capacities and functions, or bandwidth, in their economic and non-economic lives. Yet, many factors associated with poverty, such as malnutrition, alcohol consumption, or sleep deprivation, may tax this capacity. Previous research has demonstrated that such taxes often significantly alter judgments, preferences, and decision-making. A more suggestive but growing body of evidence points toward potential effects on productivity and utility. Considering the lives of the poor through the lens of bandwidth may improve our understanding of potential causes and consequences of poverty.
We exploit daylight saving time (DST) as an exogenous shock to daylight, using both the discontinuous nature of the policy and the 2007 extension of DST, to consider the impact of light on criminal activity. Regression discontinuity estimates show a 7% decrease in robberies following the shift to DST. As expected, effects are largest during the hours directly affected by the shift in daylight. We discuss our findings within the context of criminal decision making and labor supply, and estimate that the 2007 DST extension resulted in $59 million in annual social cost savings from avoided robberies.
This paper uses a large database of multiple birth cohorts to study relationships between air pollution exposure and non-infant children's respiratory health outcomes. We observe several years of early-life health treatments for hundreds of thousands of English children. Three distinct research designs account for potential socioeconomic, behavioral, seasonal, and economic confounders. We find that marginal increases in carbon monoxide and ground-level ozone are associated with statistically significant increases in children's contemporaneous respiratory treatments. We also find that carbon monoxide exposure over the previous year has an effect on children's health that goes above and beyond contemporaneous exposure alone.
The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes
cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances
and found that this reduces cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Second, we examined the cognitive
function of farmers over the planting cycle. We found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before harvest,
when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich. This cannot be explained by differences in time available, nutrition,
or work effort. Nor can it be explained with stress: Although farmers do show more stress before harvest, that does not account
for diminished cognitive performance. Instead, it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity. We suggest that
this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks. These data provide a previously
unexamined perspective and help explain a spectrum of behaviors among the poor. We discuss some implications for poverty policy.
The effects of malodorous pollution upon evaluative and cognitive judgments were examined in two experiments. In one experiment, 24 male and 24 female undergraduates evaluated paintings, peers in photographs, and persons described by adjectives while breathing air that was either unpolluted or polluted by ethyl mercoptan. As predicted, evaluations of unfamiliar, neutral, but not extreme stimuli were lowered by pollution. In a second experiment, 40 males and 40 females were exposed to one of four IS-minute sequences of odor and no-odor while they worked on simple (arithmetic) and complex (proofreading) tasks. Half of these subjects were led to believe that they could avoid exposure, and the other half were led to believe that exposure was uncontrollable. As hypothesized, malodor impaired performances on complex but not simple tasks; as was also hypothesized, exposure produced behavioral aftereffects in the form of lowered tolerance for frustration when subjects had been deprived of control. Under conditions of low control, aftereffects were greatest when subjects were exposed to malodor for relatively long periods of time and were tested immediately after exposure. It was concluded that malodorous pollution exerts effects similar to ones produced by noise, density, and other stressors.
It was predicted that negative affect associated with one component of air pollution (malodor) reduces attraction toward both similar and dissimilar strangers. In one experiment, 27 subjects rated attitudinally similar or dissimilar strangers while confined in a room whose atmosphere was ambient (no-odor control) or polluted by ammonium sulfide. Contrary to predictions, similar strangers elicited greatest liking in the polluted atmosphere. It was suggested that air pollution had increased attraction for another who might be experiencing the same disagreeable situation (i.e., “shared stress”). In a second experiment, this suggestion was examined by assuring subjects that they were alone and would not meet the similar or dissimilar person they rated. As predicted, exposure to either ammonium sulfide or butyric acid combined additively with attitudinal dissimilarity to depress liking, mood-affect, time spent in the setting, and ratings of the environment. These results were viewed as consistent with the reinforcement-affect model of attraction, but it was cautioned that the effects of air pollution may depend on social factors, such as shared stress, and dosage level of the pollutant.
Moderate effects of pollution on health may exert an important influence on labor market decisions. We exploit exogenous variation in pollution due to the closure of a large refinery in Mexico City to understand how pollution impacts labor supply. The closure led to an 8 percent decline in pollution in the surrounding neighborhoods. We find that a one percent increase in sulfur dioxide results in a 0.61 percent decrease in the hours worked. The effects do not appear to be driven by labor demand shocks nor differential migration as a result of the closure in the areas located near the refinery.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
We link daily air pollution exposure to measures of contemporaneous health for communities surrounding the twelve largest
airports in California. These airports are some of the largest sources of air pollution in the US, and they experience large
changes in daily air pollution emissions depending on the amount of time planes spend idling on the tarmac. Excess airplane
idling, measured as residual daily taxi time, is due to network delays originating in the Eastern US. This idiosyncratic variation
in daily airplane taxi time significantly impacts the health of local residents, largely driven by increased levels of carbon
monoxide (CO) exposure. We use this variation in daily airport congestion to estimate the population dose-response of health
outcomes to daily CO exposure, examining hospitalization rates for asthma, respiratory, and heart-related emergency room admissions.
A one standard deviation increase in daily pollution levels leads to an additional $540 thousand in hospitalization costs
for respiratory and heart-related admissions for the 6 million individuals living within 10 km (6.2 miles) of the airports
in California. These health effects occur at levels of CO exposure far below existing Environmental Protection Agency mandates,
and our results suggest there may be sizable morbidity benefits from lowering the existing CO standard.
Environmental protection is typically cast as a tax on the labor market and the economy in general. Since a large body of evidence links pollution with poor health, and health is an important part of human capital, efforts to reduce pollution could plausibly be viewed as an investment in human capital and thus a tool for promoting economic growth. While a handful of studies have documented the impacts of pollution on labor supply, this paper is the first to rigorously assess the less visible but likely more pervasive impacts on worker productivity. In particular, we exploit a novel panel dataset of daily farm worker output as recorded under piece rate contracts merged with data on environmental conditions to relate the plausibly exogenous daily variations in ozone with worker productivity. We find robust evidence that ozone levels well below federal air quality standards have a significant impact on productivity: a 10 ppb decrease in ozone concentrations increases worker productivity by 4.2 percent.
We exploit the introduction of electronic toll collection, (E-ZPass), which greatly reduced both traffic congestion and vehicle emissions near highway toll plazas. We show that the introduction of E-ZPass reduced prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2 kilometers (km) of a toll plaza by 10.8 percent and 11.8 percent, respectively, relative to mothers 2-10 km from a toll plaza. There were no immediate changes in the characteristics of mothers or in housing prices near toll plazas that could explain these changes. The results are robust to many changes in specification and suggest that traffic congestion contributes significantly to poor health among infants. (JEL I12, J13, Q51, Q53, R41)
Mice inhaling positively ionized air exhibited a significant rise in the blood level of 5-hydroxytryptamine [5-HT]BL. This effect was duplicated by non-ionized air to which CO2+ was added but did not occur when the same amount of either nonionized CO2 or CO2− replaced CO2+. The rise in [5-HT]BL was associated with physiological changes that parallel those appearing after the injection of 5-HT or after administration of iproniazid.Some of the animals exposed to CO2+ in air became ill and suffered tissue damage attributable to excessive concentrations of 5-HT. A few of the mice died and at autopsy pulmonary and enteric lesions were found which also were reasonably ascribed to the increased 5-HTBL.The physiological,pathological and biochemical changes described furnish additional support for the 5-HT hypothesis of air ion action presented in earlier publications. There is good reason to believe that some of the known biological effects of gaseous ions involve other mechanisms.
Archival data covering a two-year period were obtained from four sources in order to assess relationships between calls for assistance in handling psychiatric emergencies and levels of air pollution, nine types of weather, four temporal variables, and changes in the economy. Multiple regression and analysis of covariance revealed that police received a disproportionate number of calls when levels of air pollution, especially photochemical oxidants, and temperatures were high. Also, more calls were received on weekdays than weekends and during spring and winter than other months. These results, which are consistent with affective models of social behavior, confirm hypotheses derived from laboratory studies on malodorous pollution. It is suggested that psychiatric emergencies and treatment should be included in costbenefit analyses of air pollution-health relationships.
Oxidative stress in central and peripheral systems is involved in many diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and several psychiatric disorders. In the present study, the brain and peripheral oxidative status of non-anxious and anxious mice was evaluated using 2′,7′-dichlorofluorescin diacetate (DCFH-DA), a sensor of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Here we report that anxiety levels are linked to the oxidative status in both neuronal and glial cells in the cerebellum and hippocampus, in neurons of the cerebral cortex and in peripheral leucocytes (monocytes, granulocytes and lymphocytes), revealing the presence of oxidative stress in the central and peripheral systems of anxious mice. These findings suggest the redox system in anxious mice may play a role in neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration, predisposing them to recurrent infections and chronic inflammation.
Mobile measurements of ambient noise and particle number concentrations were carried out within an urban residential area in Essen, Germany, during summer 2008. A busy major road with a traffic intensity of about 44,000 vehicles per day was situated within the study area. The spatio-temporal distribution of noise and particles was closely coupled to road traffic on the major road. Total particle number concentrations in proximity to the main road were on average between 25,000 cm−3 and 35,000 cm−3 while sound levels reached 70–78 dB(A). These estimates were more than double-fold (factor 2.4) in comparison to the urban residential background. At a 50 m distance off the road particle number concentrations were decaying to about 50% of the initial value. The measurements were characterised by close spatial correlation between total particle number concentration and ambient noise with correlation coefficients of up to r = 0.74. However, during one measurement day coupling between both quantities was weak due to higher turbulent mixing within the canopy layer and a change in ambient wind directions. Enhanced dilution of particle emission from road traffic by turbulent mixing and ‘decoupling’ from the influence of road traffic are believed to be responsible.
Testosterone, crime, and prison behavior were examined among 692 adult male prison inmates. Testosterone was measured from saliva samples, and behavior was coded from prison system records. Inmates who had committed personal crimes of sex and violence had higher testosterone levels than inmates who had committed property crimes of burglary, theft, and drugs. Inmates with higher testosterone levels also violated more rules in prison, especially rules involving overt confrontation. The findings indicate differences between low and high testosterone individuals in the amount and pattern of their misbehavior.
Our understanding of the biological basis of aggression in all vertebrates, including humans, has been built largely upon discoveries first made in birds. A voluminous literature now indicates that hormonal mechanisms are shared between humans and a number of avian species. Research on genetics mechanisms in birds has lagged behind the more typical laboratory species because the necessary tools have been lacking until recently. Over the past 30 years, three major technical advances have propelled forward our understanding of the hormonal, neural, and genetic bases of aggression in birds: (1) the development of assays to measure plasma levels of hormones in free-living individuals, or "field endocrinology"; (2) the immunohistochemical labeling of immediate early gene products to map neural responses to social stimuli; and (3) the sequencing of the zebra finch genome, which makes available a tremendous set of genomic tools for studying gene sequences, expression, and chromosomal structure in species for which we already have large datasets on aggressive behavior. This combination of hormonal, neuroendocrine, and genetic tools has established songbirds as powerful models for understanding the neural basis and evolution of aggression in vertebrates. In this chapter, we discuss the contributions of field endocrinology toward a theoretical framework linking aggression with sex steroids, explore evidence that the neural substrates of aggression are conserved across vertebrate species, and describe a promising new songbird model for studying the molecular genetic mechanisms underlying aggression.
Building on animal and human lesion evidence, neuroimaging studies are increasingly identifying abnormalities in corticolimbic circuits mediating aggressive behavior. This review focuses on three neural systems involved in impulsive/reactive aggression: 1) subcortical neural systems that support the production of aggressive impulses; 2) decision-making circuits and social-emotional information processing circuits that evaluate the consequences of aggressing or not aggressing; and 3) frontoparietal regions that are involved in regulating emotions and impulsive motivational urges. We review psychiatric disorders, including borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, characterized by elevated reactive aggression, focusing on abnormalities in these three neural systems.
Research has implicated environmental risk factors, such as meteorological variables, in suicide. However, studies have not investigated air pollution, known to induce acute medical conditions and increase mortality, in suicide. This study comprehensively assesses the temporal relationship between suicide and air pollution, weather, and unemployment variables in Taipei City from January 1 1991 to December 31 2008.
This research used the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method to de-trend the suicide data into a set of intrinsic oscillations, called intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Multiple linear regression analysis with forward stepwise method was used to identify significant predictors of suicide from a pool of air pollution, weather, and unemployment data, and to quantify the temporal association between decomposed suicide IMFs with these predictors at different time scales.
Findings of this study predicted a classic seasonal pattern of increased suicide occurring in early summer by increased air particulates and decreased barometric pressure, in which the latter was in accordance with increased temperature during the corresponding time. Gaseous air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and ozone, were found to increase the risk of suicide at longer time scales. Decreased sunshine duration and sunspot activity predicted the increased suicide. After controlling for the unemployment factor, environmental risks predicted 33.7% of variance in the suicide data.
Using EMD analysis, this study found time-scale dependent associations between suicide and air pollution, weather and unemployment data. Contributing environmental risks may vary in different geographic regions and in different populations.
Despite increasing regulatory attention and literature linking roadside air pollution to health outcomes, studies on near roadway air quality have not yet been well synthesized. We employ data collected from 1978 as reported in 41 roadside monitoring studies, encompassing more than 700 air pollutant concentration measurements, published as of June 2008. Two types of normalization, background and edge-of-road, were applied to the observed concentrations. Local regression models were specified to the concentration-distance relationship and analysis of variance was used to determine the statistical significance of trends. Using an edge-of-road normalization, almost all pollutants decay to background by 115-570 m from the edge of road; using the more standard background normalization, almost all pollutants decay to background by 160-570 m from the edge of road. Differences between the normalization methods arose due to the likely bias inherent in background normalization, since some reported background values tend to underpredict (be lower than) actual background. Changes in pollutant concentrations with increasing distance from the road fell into one of three groups: at least a 50% decrease in peak/edge-of-road concentration by 150 m, followed by consistent but gradual decay toward background (e.g., carbon monoxide, some ultrafine particulate matter number concentrations); consistent decay or change over the entire distance range (e.g., benzene, nitrogen dioxide); or no trend with distance (e.g., particulate matter mass concentrations).
Traffic-generated air pollution and noise have both been linked to cardiovascular morbidity. Since traffic is a shared source, there is potential for correlated exposures that may lead to confounding in epidemiologic studies. As part of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution (MESA Air), 2-week NO and NO(2) concentrations were measured at up to 105 locations, selected primarily to characterize gradients near major roads, in each of 9 US communities. We measured 5-min A-weighted equivalent continuous sound pressure levels (L(eq)) and ultrafine particle (UFP) counts at a subset of these NO/NO(2) monitoring locations in Chicago, IL (N=69 in December 2006; N=36 in April 2007) and Riverside County, CA (N=46 in April 2007). L(eq) and UFP were measured during non-"rush hour" periods (10:00-16:00) to maximize comparability between measurements. We evaluated roadway proximity exposure surrogates in relation to the measured levels, estimated noise-air pollution correlation coefficients, and evaluated the impact of regional-scale pollution gradients, wind direction, and roadway proximity on the correlations. Five-minute L(eq) measurements in December 2006 and April 2007 were highly correlated (r=0.84), and measurements made at different times of day were similar (coefficients of variation: 0.5-13%), indicating that 5-min measurements are representative of long-term L(eq). Binary and continuous roadway proximity metrics characterized L(eq) as well or better than NO or NO(2). We found strong regional-scale gradients in NO and NO(2), particularly in Chicago, but only weak regional-scale gradients in L(eq) and UFP. L(eq) was most consistently correlated with NO, but the correlations were moderate (0.20-0.60). After removing the influence of regional-scale gradients the correlations generally increased (L(eq)-NO: r=0.49-0.62), and correlations downwind of major roads (L(eq)-NO: r=0.53-0.74) were consistently higher than those upwind (0.35-0.65). There was not a consistent effect of roadway proximity on the correlations. In conclusion, roadway proximity variables are not unique exposure surrogates in studies of endpoints hypothesized to be related to both air pollution and noise. Moderate correlations between traffic-generated air pollution and noise suggest the possibility of confounding, which might be minimized by considering regional pollution gradients and/or prevailing wind direction(s) in epidemiologic studies.
The authors studied the correlation between mean daily levels of several air pollutants and the number of emergency room visits and inpatient admissions to a psychiatric hospital in St. Louis during one summer and fall. Nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide showed a positive correlation with emergency room visits by all patients, and nitrogen dioxide also had a positive correlation with inpatient admissions of subjects with diagnoses that were unknown or could not be specified as psychotic. Nitrogen monoxide showed a negative correlation with inpatient admissions during working days (but not during weekends and holidays) for all patients, as well as for those with diagnoses that were unknown or could not be specified as psychotic.
We followed up a sample of psychiatric patients (diagnoses predominantly schizophrenia and depression) who had participated in in-patient studies of their CSF over the past 15 years. The status of 73 former patients was confirmed, of whom 12 had died. Seven of these patients died at age < or = 40, largely of suicide, homicide, or accidental causes. These seven patients had significantly lower CSF 5-HIAA and HVA than living control patients. There were significant direct correlations between age at death and both CSF 5-HIAA and HVA in the deceased patients. The results offer support for CSF monoamine metabolites relating to early death in a diagnostically diverse sample of psychiatric patients.
The aim of this study was to clarify a possible relationship between pollution and worsening of headache in the industrial city of Turin.
October 1992 to June 1993, we examined a group of 32 patients suffering from various headache types. During these months, they kept a daily record of their headaches and associated isturbances. Changes in pain frequency and severity were recorded every hour of the day and compared hour to hour with the various degrees of pollution recorded in the main streets by a monitoring station. The influence of meteorological parameters was also taken into consideration.
During winter, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide showed a simultaneous hyperconcentration on the same days and the same hours. Increased incidence of headache attacks and increase in severity corresponded to the same hours, days, and months. The findings were statistically significant (P=0.008, Student's t-test). An isolated increase in nitrogen dioxide only (without an increase in carbon monoxide which was only recorded once) induced headache a couple of hours after the peak concentration was reached.
Among the meteorological factors, only the highest values in wind velocity were shown to exert a significant influence on worsening headache frequency and severity.
Polysomnographic studies were done at hourly intervals during 0.00, 0.35, 0.75 and 1.50 ppm of ozone (O3) exposure. We found a significant decrease in paradoxical sleep after 2 h and an increase in slow wave sleep after 12 h at all concentrations of O3. High resolution liquid chromatography demonstrated an increase in 5-HT concentration in the rat pons, in a roughly stepwise fashion as the O3 concentration increased. We propose that reaction products derived from O3 exposure, such as prostaglandins, could be affecting those physiological and biochemical mechanisms critical for the generation and maintenance of the sleep-wake cycle.
To investigate the effects of acute low-level exposure to carbon monoxide on higher cognitive functions in healthy humans.
An empirical study of the effects of low-level exposure to carbon monoxide on higher cognitive functions in young healthy volunteers and a matched nonexposed control group.
A dormitory at the Hebrew University campus in Jerusalem, Israel.
Forty-five student volunteers who were exposed to carbon monoxide from residential kerosene stoves for 1.5 to 2.5 hours (air carbon monoxide concentrations of 17-100 ppm; mean +/- SD, 61 +/- 24 ppm) served as the experimental group and 47 nonexposed students served as the control group.
A battery of neuropsychological tests was administered to each participant including digit span, the revised Wechsler Memory Scale for verbal and figural memory, Trail-Making Test parts A and B, digit symbol, block design, and the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test.
Venous blood carboxyhemoglobin (Hbco) levels in participants of the study group ranged from 0.01 to 0.11 (mean +/- SD, 0.04 +/- 0.03) and correlated with air carbon monoxide concentrations (r = 0.39; P = .01). The experimental group scored significantly lower than controls on the following tests: digit span forward (P = .02), short-term (P = .008) and long-term semantic memory (P = .008), digit symbol (P = .004), block design (P = .009), recall of figural memory (P = .02), and Trail-Making part A (P = .04). No significant differences were found between the experimental and control groups in other tests.
The lower scores on neuropsychological tests indicate dysfunctions in memory, new learning ability, attention and concentration, tracking skills, visuomotor skills, abstract thinking, and visuospatial planing and processing. These dysfunctions correspond with previous reports of carbon monoxide neurotoxic effects in patients with moderate carbon monoxide poisoning. Low-level exposure to carbon monoxide results in impairment of higher cognitive functions. Neuropsychological testing appears to be sensitive in the detection of subtle neurologic dysfunctions resulting from carbon monoxide poisoning.