Health, air pollution, and animal agriculture
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Health, air pollution, and animal agriculture Emmanuelle Lavaine 1 & Philippe Majerus 2 & Nicolas Treich 3 # INRAE and Springer-Verlag France SAS, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In this paper, we discuss the health impact of animal agriculture through air pollution. While this impact is potentially considerable, we argue that it has been largely overlooked by regulators as well as by researchers, and in particular by economists. We discuss the methods, results, limitations, and uncertainties of existing scientific studies on this impact, and conclude with a tentative discussion of the regulation of air pollution in agriculture. Keywords Air pollution . Animal agriculture . Health . Economics . Regulation
Introduction The global detrimental impact of animal farming is now both well documented and overwhelming. Animal farming is a major cause of deforestation (De Sy et al. 2015), biodiversity loss (Machovina et al. 2015), antibioresistance (O’Neill 2015), and infectious diseases emergence and amplification (Rohr et al. 2019). Moreover, it contributes significantly to water pollution, water scarcity, and climate change (Godfray et al. 2018; Poore and Nemecek 2018; Springmann et al. 2017). Additionally, the exploitation of farmed animals, especially in its widespread intensive forms, raises various Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s41130-02000124-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Emmanuelle Lavaine [email protected] Philippe Majerus [email protected] Nicolas Treich [email protected]
1
CEE-M, Univ. Montpellier, CNRS, INRAE, Institut Agro, Montpellier, France
2
Toulouse School of Economics, University Toulouse Capitole, Toulouse, France
3
Toulouse School of Economics, INRAE, University Toulouse Capitole, Toulouse, France
E. Lavaine et al.
moral issues. In this paper, we discuss another impact of animal farming, namely, that on air pollution and in turn on human health. We first identify the air pollution pathways and health impacts, then we summarize the existing scientific knowledge on the health impacts of agricultural air pollution, and we finally conclude by emphasizing the need for more (economic) research and more regulation.
Pathways and health impacts Air pollution is a major environmental health issue, and the necessity to reduce this pollution is well recognized both in academia and policy making. However, emissions of pollutants in agriculture have remained relatively stagnant over decades. In the EU, the decrease in particulate matter (PM) emissions is mainly due to reductions in other sectors such as transport, energy production, and energy use in industries (EEA 2018). These sectors also significantly reduced emissions of their main pollutants; nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions in transport decreased by 59% and sulfur oxide (SOx) emissions in energy production decreased by 93% since 1990 (EEA 2019a, b). In agriculture, one of the main pollutants is ammonia (NH3)
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