Farming ‘hotspots’ carry air pollution risk, Dutch study finds FT.com

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Farming ‘hotspots’ carry air pollution risk, Dutch study finds FT.com

 

Pilita Clark, Environment Correspondent

The countryside is supposed to offer a healthy escape from the blight of city smog, but new research

suggests this is not the case for people living near a lot of pig, cow or chicken farms.

The air around farming “hotspots” can be as risky to breathe as that in a trafficchoked

city, according to Dr Lidwien Smit, the senior author of a year-long government-funded

study in the Netherlands.

“If you talk about air pollution, people always think ‘Oh, that’s an urban problem’ and of course it is,” said Dr

Smit, an environmental epidemiologist at Utrecht University.

But the biggest contribution to deaths linked with air pollution in Europe comes from agriculture, “and no one knows this really”, she said. Intensive farms in particular should be subjected to the same strict pollution rules as other industries, she added.

Scientists have already established that agriculture helps create the haze pollution that drifts across many countries. The Dutch study is one of the first to use physical health tests to measure the impact of farms on the health of nearby residents.

One of the main culprits is the ammonia released from animal urine and faeces. It can combine with other substances in the atmosphere to form a type of air pollution known as particulate matter, microscopic particles small enough to be inhaled that have been shown to affect lung and heart health.

 

About 94 per cent of ammonia emissions in Europe come from agriculture, official data show, mainly from activities such as manure storage or slurry spreading.

Dr Smit and her colleagues tested nearly 2,500 adults in a rural area in the southeast of the Netherlands, where the spread of towns and villages means people live relatively close to the pig, cattle and poultry farms dotting the region. The area is home to about 1m people and 6m pigs, Dr Smit said.

Those tested had to inhale deeply and blow out hard to measure how well their lungs worked.

After adjusting for age, gender and other factors such as smoking history, the researchers found the lung function of people living within 1km of 15 or more farms was on average 5 per cent worse than that of people living further away from such farms.

That may not sound like a lot, said Dr Smit, but it is still significant. “It can be clinically relevant, especially in those with an already compromised lung function,” she said.

2,500 Adults were tested in the southeast of the Netherlands, in an area home to 1m people and 6m pigs

The research also found a correlation between lung health and high levels of ammonia. When people were tested after local air quality monitors showed the weekly average concentration of ammonia had risen by 10 micrograms per cubic meter, lung function readings were typically 4 per cent worse than when ammonia levels were lower.

This was seen in healthy adults as well as those with existing respiratory conditions, according to the study, which is due to be presented to the European Respiratory Society’s international congress that starts in London this weekend.

The findings underline the need for governments to take tougher action on farm pollution, said Professor Stephen Holgate, the society’s science council chair.

“It raises a very important issue,” he said, adding that there needed to be much better monitoring of intensive farming’s “pollution plumes that spread out across the neighbourhood”.