Budding sixth former, Jevan Sathyamoorthy, joined the Mohn Centre for work experience. Read through his summary of a recent research article.

With a passion for psychology, Jevan was interested in learning more about the Study of Cognition, Adolescents and Mobile Phones during his work experience at the Mohn Centre, before beginning his A levels in September. Read through his summary of a recent paper published by the team titled “Air pollution, traffic noise, mental health, and cognitive development: A multi-exposure longitudinal study of London adolescents in the SCAMP cohort”.

Teenage years are a critical period for the development of a healthy brain. This stage of life serves as an important time for us to establish key life skills, such as learning how to manage emotional and behavioural difficulties to effectively complete day-to-day tasks in our later years. However, a study conducted by the Study of Cognition, Adolescents and Mobile Phones (SCAMP) across Greater London has shown that higher exposure to air and noise pollution is linked to worsened mental development during adolescence.

Until a person’s mid-twenties our brains are ‘fine tuning’ themselves, leaving us more vulnerable to the potentially negative impacts of environmental factors on our mental development and wellbeing. Although multiple studies have investigated the effects of factors such as air pollution and traffic noise on our brains, a gap in understanding remains regarding the impact of said factors on teenagers' development. Many studies have failed to separate teenagers from younger children, which overlooks how mental changes during adolescence differ greatly from those experienced in childhood. These oversights potentially miss the specific effects these harmful factors have on teenagers’ development. To address this knowledge gap, the SCAMP team focused solely on teenagers, using data from young people aged 11 to 12 and 13 to 15 for follow up. Furthermore, this is the first study to significantly research the effect of ozone pollution on adolescent’s brain development.

SCAMP collected data from 39 schools across Greater London. After assessing participants' answers from a series of questions relevant to their cognition and mental health, it was found that higher ozone exposure not only resulted in slower cognitive development but also caused a rise in emotional and behavioural problems. After the levels of noise that teenagers were exposed to was determined, the results showed that higher levels of traffic noise correlated to an increase in anxiety, regardless of the time of day, and this was shown to be even more significant when there was 24-hour noise exposure. These findings reinforce the claim that air and noise pollution negatively affect brain development and highlight the detrimental effects of high levels of ozone exposure. Further, the findings also showed a ‘slowing down’ of the ‘refinement’ of cognitive systems (these systems affect our mental and physical fitness, behaviour, and academic achievement, among other things).

Research into the impacts of air and noise pollution may provide solutions for local authorities, as they aim to reduce the negative impacts of pollution, improve environmental quality and tackle climate change. However, care should be taken when developing schemes aimed at reducing air pollution (e.g. NO₂), as research has shown how the implementation of schemes like ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) could lead to technology use that instead increases the levels of ozone, thus maintaining the negative impacts on young people. Overall, this paper has shown how air pollution and traffic noise, including the impacts of high ozone exposure levels, have a potentially detrimental impact on young people’s development. This should therefore add to the public case that to improve young people’s psychological health, these environmental conditions should be improved, protecting, and promoting healthy brain development as young people grow up.

Read the full paper in the Environment International journal.