WORLD HEALTH RESEARCH ARTICLE: Wow!!! Football performance linked to air quality

Is your favourite football team playing badly? It could be due to poor air quality.
German scientists have cross-referenced the form of top-flight footballers with air quality from outside each stadium in the country.

They found that for each 1% increase in air pollution molecule concentration, the number of passes made by each player in a game decreased by an average of 0.2%.
The negative effects of pollution also seem to increase with age, most noticeably affecting players aged 30 and over.

Defenders and midfielders are the positions most likely to be affected, as they are "more attached to the game and exert a larger number of passes", the researchers said.

Researchers said the conclusions were drawn from an in-depth study of almost 3,000 matches, across 32 different stadiums, over a 12-year period.

The team from the Institute for the Study of Labour in Bonn said the findings show that pollution has a wide affect on society.

They said that high pollution levels are likely to be particularly harmful to those in low-skilled manual jobs.

Their report said: "Our analysis highlights that economic consequences of environmental pollution are not limited to adverse impacts on population health.

"Even moderate concentrations of particulate matter commonly experienced in developed countries negatively affect the productivity of a selective group of professional soccer players, young and male athletes, to a considerable extent.

"Our findings hence complement previous empirical evidence on air pollution’s negative effects on the productivity of low-skilled agricultural and factory workers in countries with higher levels of pollution."

The team said air pollution costs the EU between £46bn and £154bn each year.

Their findings have been published in a report due to be presented to the Royal Economic Society's annual conference in Brighton later this month.

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