A study from the University of East Anglia shows an association between poor air quality in India and impaired cognition in infants under two, and the negative impact on children's long-term brain development could have lifelong consequences.

Researchers studied families from a range of socio-economic backgrounds in Shivgarh, a rural community in Uttar Pradesh, one of the states in India that has been most strongly impacted by poor air quality.

They assessed the visual working memory and visual processing speed of 215 infants using a specially-designed cognition task from October 2017 to June 2019.

On one display, the babies were shown flashing-colored squares that were always the same after each 'blink'. On the second display, one colored square changed after each blink.

This task examined the infants’ tendency to look away from something that is visually familiar and towards something new, and the researchers were interested in whether infants could detect the changing side and how well they did as the task was made harder by including more squares on each display.

The team used air quality monitors in the children's homes to measure emission levels and air quality. They also noted and controlled for family socio-economic status.

“This research shows for the first time that there is an association between poor air quality and impaired visual cognition in the first two years of life, when brain growth is at its peak," researchers stated, “such impacts could carry forward across years, negatively impacting long-term development. Reversely, our research indicates that global efforts to improve air quality could have benefits to infants' emerging cognitive abilities. This, in turn, could have a cascade of positive impacts because improved cognition can lead to improved economic productivity in the long term and reduce the burden on healthcare and mental health systems.”

One key factor the team measured was the cooking fuel commonly used at home, and air quality was poorer in homes that used solid cooking materials like cow dung cake.

Source: University of East Anglia