Air pollution makes us lose our morals

TRaFFIC fumes may be polluting our morality, a study suggests.

Exposure to pollution is linked to crime and cheating – even when other factors such as poverty and employment are accounted for, researchers found.

and just thinking about air pollution led to people cheating and behaving unethically in laboratory tests.

‘This research reveals that air pollution may have potential ethical costs that go beyond its well-known toll on health and the environment,’ said study leader Jackson Lu, at Columbia Business School in the United States.

‘Our findings suggest that air pollution not only corrupts people’s health, but also can contaminate their morality.

‘This is important because air pollution is a serious global issue that affects billions of people.

‘Even in the United States, about 142million people still reside in counties with dangerously polluted air.’

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, drew on previous research which showed exposure to pollution increases anxiety, which is known to cause unethical behaviour.

In one experiment, 256 participants saw a photo featuring either a polluted scene or a clean scene and imagined living there and how they would feel as they walked around and breathed the air.

Researchers examined air pollution and crime data for 9,360 american cities.