November 21, 2018

expert reaction to study looking at air pollution and intellectual disabilities in children

Research published in the Journal of Intellectual Disability Research shows that levels of exposure to outdoor air pollution among children with intellectual disabilities are higher than those of children without those disabilities. 

Prof Jean Golding FMedSci, Emeritus Professor of Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, University of Bristol, said:

“Identifying environmental factors that are associated with intellectual disability is important, but it is also vital that they should be scientifically sound.  This study benefits from using information collected by the Millennium Study – a large survey of children born in the UK in the early 2000’s.  Children with intellectual disabilities are mapped onto the estimated levels of air pollutants that they may have been exposed to.  This shows that more such children are resident in those areas with the highest levels of most of the pollutants.  However, these are generally the areas with most social deprivation, and no account was taken of this, nor of any of the other factors (such as the ages of the parents or their levels of education) that may have contributed to the air pollution findings.  Such detailed statistical analyses need to be carried out before any weight can be put on these findings.”

‘Risk of exposure to air pollution among British children with and without intellectual disabilities’ by E. Emerson et al. was published in the Wiley journal Journal of Intellectual Disability Research at 05:01 UK time on Wednesday 21 November 2018.

Declared interests

Prof Jean Golding: “I have no conflicts of interest.”