Exposure to smog in childhood can affect your cognitive skills up to 60 years later, study warns

Being exposed to smog and air pollution while a child can damage your cognitive skills up to six decades after you were exposed, a new study has warned. University of Edinburgh experts tested the general intelligence of over 500 people aged 70 using a test the same group completed when they were 11 years old. They also examined where the group had lived throughout their life to estimate the levels of air pollution they were exposed to during their early childhood. Those volunteers who had been exposed to air pollution as a child had suffered a small - but detectable - level of cognitive decline between the age of 11 and 70. Researchers behind this study didn't examine why air pollution appears to cause reduced cognitive skill, but previous studies have found it may be due to metal-toting particles in the pollution reaching the brain and damaging neurons.