Vegetarian diets contribute to cleaner air and prevent premature deaths caused by pollution

the air pollution Increases risk Cardiovascular and respiratory diseases It reduces cognitive and physical performance.

he food system It is one of the main causes of air pollution, and has major impacts on human health. Of particular importance are emissions Methane And based on Ammonia Which is created when manure and other fertilizers are processed and applied to fields. Adopting a healthier diet may be the intention of many people, which may change this equation, but it is often difficult to make this shift.

However, there are good reasons to continue to make informed decisions about what's on your plate, because they affect not only your health, but also the health of the planet.

Food production and consumption account for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. If left unchecked, it will likely add enough additional warming to push the Earth's average temperature to more than 1.5°C in the 2060s.

Currently, research also places air pollution on the list of problems caused by agriculture. Animal agriculture, in particular, is a major source of ammonia emissions that react with other pollutants to form fine particles, which can cause health problems such as cardiovascular disease, lung cancer and diabetes.

A recent study published in Nature CommunicationsIt reveals that switching from current diets to healthy vegetarian ones could prevent up to 236,000 premature deaths worldwide and boost global GDP, simply by improving air quality.

Healthy diet, cleaner air

According to the World Health Organization, there were four million premature deaths linked to outdoor air pollution in 2019. Agriculture is responsible for about a fifth of these deaths.

In this paper, the specialists studied what would happen to air quality if people around the world adopted healthier, better-for-the-environmental diets. This includes more flexible options with less meat, vegetarian diets without it, or vegetarian diets without animal products.

The results show that switching to plant-based diets can significantly reduce air pollution. Livestock-intensive regions, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, northern Italy, southern China and the US Midwest (in Iowa, for example, there are eight pigs per person), will see particularly sharp declines in PM storage.

Specialists have discovered that more than 100,000 premature deaths could be prevented worldwide by adopting alternative diets. The health benefits derived from clean air are in addition to those obtained from eating a more balanced diet.

These health benefits increase as people eat fewer animal products. For example, if the majority of the population adopted a diet based on flat foods, the number of premature deaths caused by air pollution could be reduced by more than 200000. In Europe and North America, adopting vegetarian diets could reduce premature deaths from air pollution by about 20%.

Clean air is an important but often overlooked aspect of the working environment. Research has found that air pollution reduces worker productivity 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.

Our estimates indicate that A Air cleanliness It can have a positive impact on the economy. We found that a shift towards plant-based diets could increase global GDP by more than 1%, equivalent to a gain of $1.3 trillion. There is no doubt that improving air quality is good for health and the economy. Specialists believe that dietary changes should be firmly included in government policies.

Adopting more plant-based diets is a cost-effective strategy to tackle emissions. But it also reduces the need for costly investments in emissions-reducing equipment for livestock systems, such as scrubbers that remove ammonia from the air.

This nutritional shift offers a wide range of benefits beyond clean air. Which includes a reduced risk of diseases related to the type of intake, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the use of land, water and fertilizers for agriculture. Achieving ambitious progress in all these areas at the same time will be a challenge if we rely solely on technological solutions.

*Marco Springmann He is the first author and corresponding author of the study and researcher at Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford in it United kingdom. Scientists Rita van Dingennen, Ton Vandyk, Katarina Latka, Peter Witzke, and Adrian Lieb also participated in the research. The information in this journal article is derived from research entitled “Global and regional impacts of nutritional change on air quality,” published in the journal Nature Communications. In addition to the press release issued by the University of Oxford.