Food systems account for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. If left unchecked, these emissions are likely to cause enough additional warming to push Earth's average temperature beyond a 1.5°C increase by the 2060s.
Research now also includes air pollution in the list of problems caused by agriculture. Particularly, livestock farming is a significant source of ammonia emissions. These emissions react with other pollutants to form fine particulate matter, which can lead to health issues such as cardiovascular diseases, lung cancer, and diabetes.
A recent study published in Nature Communications reveals that transitioning from the current diet to healthier, more plant-based ones could prevent up to 236,000 early deaths worldwide by improving air quality alone and could also boost global GDP.
Healthier eating, cleaner air
According to the World Health Organization, 4 million premature deaths occurred in 2019 due to outdoor air pollution. About one-fifth of these deaths are attributed to agriculture.
We examined what would happen to air quality if people around the world shifted to healthier and more environmentally friendly diets. This includes more flexible diets with less meat, vegetarian diets that exclude meat, and vegan diets that exclude animal products.
Our results show that transitioning to a plant-based diet could significantly reduce air pollution. In regions with a high number of animals, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Northern Italy, Southern China, and the Midwest of the United States (where there are eight pigs per person in Iowa), especially significant reductions in fine particulate matter concentrations will be observed.
Better air quality leads to better health. We found that adopting flexible diets could prevent more than 100,000 premature deaths worldwide. The health benefits gained from cleaner air contribute to the advantages provided by a more balanced diet.
As people consume fewer animal products, these health benefits increase. For example, if everyone were vegan, the number of premature deaths caused by air pollution could decrease by more than 200,000. Adopting a vegan diet in Europe and North America could reduce premature deaths from air pollution by about 20%.
Clean air is often an overlooked but important aspect of the working environment. Research has shown that air pollution reduces the productivity of workers in many different jobs, from farms to factories. For example, studies have shown that air pollution affects the productivity of blueberry pickers and pear packers.
Enabling Change
Improving air quality is undoubtedly beneficial for our health and economy. Therefore, we argue that dietary changes should be firmly placed on the policy agenda.
Adopting more plant-based eating is a cost-effective strategy in the fight against emissions. However, it also reduces the need for expensive investments in emission-reducing equipment for livestock systems, such as scrubbers that clean ammonia from the air.
Eating less meat will also reduce the need for more stringent measures to reduce pollution. For example, researchers had previously suggested relocating 10 billion animals away from southern and eastern China to reduce ammonia exposure in these areas.
The transition to healthier, plant-based diets offers a wide range of benefits beyond clean air. These benefits include a reduction in the risk of diet-related diseases, a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, and a reduction in the use of land, water, and fertilizers for agriculture.
If we rely solely on technological solutions, it will be difficult to achieve ambitious progress in all of these areas simultaneously.
In the summer of 2023, the German supermarket chain Penny conducted a week-long experiment to raise awareness about the true cost of food products on human health and the environment. The prices applied to customers took into account the impact of food products on land use, water consumption, health, and climate.
This concept can be applied more broadly. However, to make this policy fair and acceptable, it should be combined with ways to use tax revenues to ensure that consumers are not worse off, such as reducing VAT on fruit and vegetable products and compensating vulnerable households. This would help keep overall food spending under control while protecting low-income households.
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-plant-based-diets-cleaner-air-world.html
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