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. 2021 May 18;118(20):e2013637118.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2013637118.

Air quality-related health damages of food

Nina G G Domingo  1 , Srinidhi Balasubramanian  1 , Sumil K Thakrar  1 , Michael A Clark  2 , Peter J Adams  3 , Julian D Marshall  4 , Nicholas Z Muller  5 , Spyros N Pandis  6 , Stephen Polasky  7 , Allen L Robinson  8 , Christopher W Tessum  9 , David Tilman  10 , Peter Tschofen  5 , Jason D Hill  11
Affiliations

Air quality-related health damages of food

Nina G G Domingo et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Agriculture is a major contributor to air pollution, the largest environmental risk factor for mortality in the United States and worldwide. It is largely unknown, however, how individual foods or entire diets affect human health via poor air quality. We show how food production negatively impacts human health by increasing atmospheric fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and we identify ways to reduce these negative impacts of agriculture. We quantify the air quality-related health damages attributable to 95 agricultural commodities and 67 final food products, which encompass >99% of agricultural production in the United States. Agricultural production in the United States results in 17,900 annual air quality-related deaths, 15,900 of which are from food production. Of those, 80% are attributable to animal-based foods, both directly from animal production and indirectly from growing animal feed. On-farm interventions can reduce PM2.5-related mortality by 50%, including improved livestock waste management and fertilizer application practices that reduce emissions of ammonia, a secondary PM2.5 precursor, and improved crop and animal production practices that reduce primary PM2.5 emissions from tillage, field burning, livestock dust, and machinery. Dietary shifts toward more plant-based foods that maintain protein intake and other nutritional needs could reduce agricultural air quality-related mortality by 68 to 83%. In sum, improved livestock and fertilization practices, and dietary shifts could greatly decrease the health impacts of agriculture caused by its contribution to reduced air quality.

Keywords: agriculture; air quality; fine particulate matter; food; pollution.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Annual premature deaths attributed to increased atmospheric PM2.5 from agriculture. Five alternate categorizations (columns) are shown: pollutant, process, commodity, product, and source. Pollutants include primary PM2.5 and secondary PM2.5 formed from precursor gases (NH3, NOx, NMVOCs, and SO2). The height of each black bar within each column corresponds to the number of attributed deaths; deaths within each column sum to 17,900.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Spatial distribution of PM2.5-related mortality attributed to US agricultural production. Shown are annual premature deaths per square kilometer attributed to primary PM2.5 (Top) and secondary PM2.5 from NH3 (Bottom), which together comprise 97% of agricultural PM2.5-related deaths. Maps for the other 3% of deaths (i.e., from NOx, NMVOCs, and SO2) are shown in SI Appendix, Fig. S4. For each county, the mortality shown is that which occurs somewhere in the United States as a result of emissions from that county; that is, these maps show where the impact originates, not necessarily where it is experienced.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Annual premature deaths attributed to total PM2.5 per unit of food production. Annual premature mortality attributed to total PM2.5 per 109 kg, 109 serving, 109 g protein, and 109 kcal, each measured as raw edible portion. Horizontal lines indicate the range of per-unit damages within the food group. Food groups are ordered lowest to highest within each panel.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Annual premature deaths attributed to total PM2.5 from food production that could be mitigated by a given intervention or suite of interventions. Yellow bars correspond to consumer-side interventions, blue bars to producer-side interventions, and green to a combination of the two. Values for percent decrease in mortality from current mortality are shown.
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