It reduces the amount of oxygen getting to our brain, affecting our ability to think and understand. It also makes us sleepier and more anxious.
As it’s in the air we breathe, it can affect everyone from schoolchildren to a business executive, say researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is more concentrated in indoor spaces – such as a classroom or our own living room – than outdoor areas.
Our ability to make decisions and plan is especially affected by carbon dioxide in our blood, the researchers say, and at very high levels can reduce our decision-making capabilities by 25 percent and complex strategic thinking by up to 50 percent.
Carbon dioxide started to be released into our atmosphere with the start of the industrial revolution, and has reached dangerously high levels today, with a peak of 414 parts per million (ppm) recorded last year. Scientists reckon that levels could reach 930 ppm by 2100 if left unchecked, and this would raise indoor levels to 1400 ppm.
From now on, you won’t be able to buy WDDTY in a store, as we are reverting to a subscription-only magazine. The reason goes to the very heart of what this publication stands for. As a newsstand title, we were being censored in all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle ways by a retail trade that chose never to support press freedoms. But we don’t want to stop you from getting vital information which is why we’ve curated this special subscription offer just for you. By subscribing you can still get direct access to all this information every month, via a subscription, as thousands of others do.
(Source: GeoHealth, 2020; doi: 10.1029/2019GH000237)
