---
title: "Air pollution and the quality of decisions (research idea)"
description: "Air pollution and PM2.5 appear on 213 recent papers, but only 33 of them carry a cognition, productivity, decision-making, education, mental-health or worker keyword, and \"cognitive performance\" on 5. Pollution affects brains as well as lungs. How much do bad-air days cost in exam scores, work errors and bad investment decisions?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/air-pollution-and-cognition
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/air-pollution-and-cognition.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["economics", "health", "environment"]
keywords: ["air pollution", "PM2.5", "cognitive performance"]
---

# Air pollution and the quality of decisions

Air pollution and PM2.5 appear on 213 recent papers, but only 33 of them carry a cognition, productivity, decision-making, education, mental-health or worker keyword, and "cognitive performance" on 5. Pollution affects brains as well as lungs. How much do bad-air days cost in exam scores, work errors and bad investment decisions?

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 213 papers carry an air-pollution, PM2.5, particulate or air-quality keyword (127 in economics journals, 54 in AI): "air pollution" on 85, "PM2.5" on 41, "air quality" on 24. Only 33 of them also carry a cognition, test-score, productivity, decision-making, education, mental-health, crime, worker, student or labour keyword, and "cognitive performance" appears on 5 papers.

## Questions

- On high-pollution days, do students score lower on high-stakes exams, do workers make more errors, and do traders and analysts make worse calls?
- Are the effects larger for tasks that need attention and memory than for routine tasks?
- Does indoor filtration undo the effect, and what would that imply for the value of clean-air policy?

## Data that could help

Daily pollution readings, exam results with dates and locations, call-centre or factory error logs, and trading records matched to the trader's location.

## Next step

Match the dates and locations of a national exam to daily PM2.5 readings and estimate the score loss per unit of pollution.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| air pollution | 3 | #776 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 10, 11, 8, 14, 7, 11, 12, 8, 8, 10, 6, 7, 9, 6, 9, 8, 7, 5, 7, 7, 6, 7, 12, 17, 4, 10, 3, 4, 6, 4, 3 | 243 |
| PM2.5 | 1 | #2881 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 4, 1, 0, 3, 7, 2, 0, 3, 3, 2, 2, 7, 5, 2, 1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 2, 5, 3, 1, 5, 2, 5, 2, 1 | 95 |
| cognitive performance | 0 | – | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 | 8 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Air pollution and the quality of decisions. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/air-pollution-and-cognition

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-air-pollution-and-cognition,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Air pollution and the quality of decisions},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/air-pollution-and-cognition}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).