NCT03762239

Effect of Air Pollution on the Cognitive Function of Adolescents

Citizen Science for Analysing the Effect of Air Pollution on the Cognitive Function of Adolescents

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 2,123 (actual)
• Sponsor: Barcelona Institute for Global Health · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 13 Years – 16 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Previous observational studies have reported an association between higher air pollution exposure and lower attention in children. With this project, the investigators aim to confirm this association in adolescents using an experimental design. In addition, the study will assess the relationship between air pollution exposure and individual preferences with respect to risk, time and social considerations. High school students in 3rd grade (ESO, 14-15 years of age) in different high schools in the Barcelona province (Spain) will be invited to participate. For each class in each high school, participating students will be randomly split into two equal-sized groups. Each group will be assigned to a different classroom where they will complete several activities during two hours, including an attention test (Flanker task) and a reduced version of the Global Preferences Survey. One of the classrooms will have an air purifier that will clean the air. The other classroom will have the same device but without the filters, so it will only re-circulate the air without cleaning it. Students will be masked to intervention allocation. The investigators hypothesize that students assigned to the clean air classroom will have better scores in the attention test, and that decision-making will also present differences in the two classrooms.

Conditions

• Attention Impaired
• Risk-Taking
• Risk Behavior
• Social Preferences
• Decision Making
• Attention

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Purifying the air with a Pure Airbox device (Zonair 3D)	Purifying the air of the classroom where the experiment is conducted using a Pure Airbox device (Zonair 3D)
OTHER	Using a sham air purifier (same device without filters)	Use the air purifier (Pure Airbox, Zonair 3D) without filters in the classroom where the experiment is conducted

Timeline

• Start date: 2018-11-23
• Primary completion: 2019-06-11
• Completion: 2019-06-11
• First posted: 2018-12-03
• Last updated: 2025-06-12
• Results posted: 2025-06-12

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Spain