Ask about the harm caused by environmental pollution and most people will talk about physical damage. But did you know that a polluted environment also affects your brain, reducing your ability to acquire knowledge?

A recent study by a group of scientists in China has found exactly that. The test was carried out on about 20,000 people across the country under the China Family Panel Studies.

It included various language and mathematics questions and was conducted from 2010 to 2014, mainly in areas with high levels of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide.

The report on the study said the ability of people living in polluted city air to acquire knowledge is being greatly reduced, and that various mental illnesses as well as physical ones are appearing. Professor Ji Chen, who was involved in the research, said 95 per cent of the world's people live in a polluted environment. As a result, he said, a person loses the full amount of learning ability that could be gained in a year.

In his view, the damage is greater among older people than the young, especially among men over 64, whose level of education or knowledge was found to be very low. Ji also said older people take far more of a household's important decisions than young people, so the harm is greater there too.

Source: RTV Online. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.