WTF! SMOG CAN LOWER YA KIDS IQ!

Warning: Smog lowers kids' IQs, even before they're born.
The five-year-old children of city mothers who regularly breathed in car- and truck-polluted air when they were pregnant scored significantly lower on IQ tests than kids with less exposure, a study released Monday found.

The 249 moms tested -- all from the South Bronx and upper Manhattan -- wore backpack air monitors for 48 hours during the last few months of pregnancy.

Their pre-schoolers scored four or five points lower on IQ tests than kids who were not exposed to pollution.

That's a big difference that could affect school performance, said Frederica Perera, director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health, who led the study.

The findings suggest that pre-natal exposure to air pollution could have the same harmful effects on brain development as lead exposure, and helps explain why inner city kids often do worse academically than wealthier youngsters, said Patrick Breysse, an environmental health specialist at Johns Hopkins' school of public health.

The study appeared in the August edition of Pediatrics.

Scientists said more study is needed to rule out the possibility that exposure to pollution after they were born contributed to the children's low scores.

The researchers said they plan to continuing monitoring and testing the children to learn whether school performance is affected and if there are any additional long-term effects.