![]() That’s about 15 million IQ points in my lifetime-about 0.14 IQ points for every child born since I was born.ĭuring the same time frame, Americans worked 17 million more days than they would have if they had been sick from bad air. The impact of CAA on reducing lead emissions can be estimated to have prevented 10.4 million lost IQ points in children from 1970 to 1990. Blood lead levels above 10 μg/dL in children, which were much more prevalent before CAA, have been reliably associated with cognitive impairment and behavioral problems such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Toxic accumulation of lead results in long-term neurodevelopmental and behavioral problems, including decreases in IQ scores, developmental delays, learning disabilities, antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Levels of lead found in human blood decreased more than 80% from 1976 to 1999 in American children aged one to five years, from 17.1 μg/dL to 2.0 μg/dL on average. Since the CAA 1970 Amendment that required lower emissions of lead, children’s blood lead levels in the US have continuously declined. 2 Yet, the cleaner air in the US that was motivated by those environmental disasters has probably had direct impacts on my mental health as well as that of everyone I know. I was not alive in the 1950s when the skies of New York City and London were yellow with smog that burned the eyes or when the headlines blasted the bad news of deaths in the Donora disaster in Pennsylvania in 1948. ![]() 1 Even in the 28 years that I have been alive, the PM2.5 particulate air pollution that doubles our risk for dementia and causes developmental disorders has decreased 40% from previous levels. Over the last five decades, lead in the air has dropped 99%, nitrogen dioxide has dropped more than 60%, sulfur dioxide has dropped more than 90%, and ozone has dropped more than 30%. Passed on December 17, 1963, and amended in 19, CAA was a milestone statute-the first federal law regulating air pollutants and demanding reductions in particulate matter, photochemical oxidants like ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and lead. Like me, most millennials and Gen Xers have had little idea what this legislation has meant for us, even though it may have given us each almost a year of productive life. ![]() The Clean Air Act (CAA) turned 55 years old last year.
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