Data proves air pollution makes your workers sicker and dumber
Great companies focus on employees first and spend millions of dollars every year to fine tune productivity. Now, accumulating evidence suggests that air pollution is making your workforce not just sicker, but also less productive and more error prone.
Air pollution is a bigger killer than AIDS, malaria and TB combined and affects 90 percent of the world’s population. So odds are, it’s affecting your business — both the well-being of your workforce and your company’s bottom line.
How air pollution is bad for business
Air pollution is considered a silent threat because it’s usually hard to see, but the increases in sick time and long-term health care costs are crystal clear. For example, one study showed that air pollution in central London causes the equivalent of over 650,000 sick days each year. It also costs the global economy $225 billion each year in lost labor income, while pollution and traffic congestion routinely disrupt daily business operations.
There’s no hiding from air pollution’s damaging health effects, but a growing body of research shows that air pollution also directly affects the brain, decreasing cognitive performance and impairing judgment. This is true for indoor as well as outdoor workers.
Here are just a few examples of the problems air pollution causes for businesses:
- Stock traders in Germany were 10 percent less likely to sit down and trade when air pollution levels increased by relatively small amounts, even after accounting for investor-, environment- and market-specific factors. This suggests that air pollution has an impact on white collar worker productivity.
- What’s more, air pollution levels influenced stock trading too. A study of daily data from the S&P 500 index and daily air-quality data from an EPA sensor close to Wall Street found that on days with higher air pollution, stock returns were lower by almost 12 percent. These findings were replicated in analyses using data from the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
- A National Bureau of Economic Research study on the productivity of indoor workers at a pear-packing factory showed that an increase in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) — a harmful pollutant that can easily get indoors — leads to a 6 percent decrease in packing speeds inside the factory.
- While not as big a factor within the U.S., international businesses in heavily air polluted cities have had to offer a form of ‘hazard pay’ to woo top executives. For example, Panasonic offered their Chinese employees a ‘pollution premium’ and Coca-Cola offered a 15 percent bonus for their employees willing to move to China. But even after relocating, many execs still choose to leave, citing pollution related health concerns for themselves and their children.
Related: 3 reasons why air pollution should be a top priority for business
Even umpires (and children) make mental blunders
The increased errors in decision making caused by air pollution manifest in surprising ways. For example, baseball fans can expect more bad calls on days with higher levels of air pollution. One study found that umpires facing elevated levels of fine particulate matter and ambient carbon monoxide make an extra two incorrect calls per 100 decisions from just a one part-per-million increase in 3-hour carbon monoxide.
Additionally, students taking important exams on days with greater air pollution had significantly worse test scores. Sefi Roth, the lead author of the study, told the BBC, “Even a few days before and a few days after, we found no effect — it’s really just on the day of the exam that the test score decreased significantly.”
Consider what this means for you and your colleagues: how could air pollution could be affecting executive decisions at your business?
Here’s how to help your workers and your business
It’s clear that air pollution’s deleterious effects go further than once imagined, making it that much more important to address. But in order to manage it, you have to know the air quality where your employees live and work. Part of what makes it difficult, is that air pollution is invisible and varies greatly across a city (in some places by almost eight times).
So Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has now developed methods to measure and create the most precise air quality maps to date. The results are being used to advocate for cleaner air in several cities, including Oakland, Houston and London via the Breathe London Initiative.
But what about your workforce? Here are a few things you can do right away:
- Ask your mayor what the city is doing to monitor air pollution, to see what you and your employees are breathing. The city may already have the resources!
- Advocate for cleaner air in the areas where you live and work. While Washington is doing all it can to roll back environmental protections, local politicians and business leaders have been stepping up, taking the lead and making moves.
- Then incorporate air pollution into your company’s sustainability goals — a win-win since it helps curb climate change and helps your employees thrive. Companies with fleets can make an immediate impact by implementing aggressive plans to transition the bulk of their large vehicles to zero-emission vehicles.
The cumulative effects of air pollution are damaging and deadly, and your competition is already taking action — so there’s no time to waste. Get started tackling air pollution where you work and live today.
We are entering a new era of environmental innovation that is driving better alignment between technology and environmental goals — and results. #FourthWave
