Growing Corn Is A Major Contributor To Air Pollution, Study Finds

[Eugene]

Source: NPR

Growing Corn Is A Major Contributor To Air Pollution, Study Finds

April 1, 2019 3:28 PM ET
JONATHAN LAMBERT

You've probably heard statistics about how our diet affects the health of the planet. Like how a beef hamburger takes considerably more water and land to produce than a veggie burger or that around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions stem from food production. In fact, there are websites that can calculate the carbon footprint of specific foods.

But you may not have considered how the food we eat contributes to the quality of the air we breathe.

Air pollution is the largest environmental health risk factor in the United States, and agriculture contributes in a number of ways. Fertilizer application, gas use, pesticide production and dust kicked up from tilling all affect air quality. But the sort of accounting done for the carbon footprint of foods hasn't been done for their air pollution footprint.

That changed Monday with a study published in Nature Sustainability. It modeled how the production of a single crop, corn, contributes to air pollution in the United States. The researchers found that corn production accounts for 4,300 premature deaths related to air pollution every year in the United States. Ammonia from fertilizer application was by far the largest contributor to corn's air pollution footprint.

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Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/04/01/708818581/growing-corn-is-a-major-contributor-to-air-pollution-study-finds

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Related: Air-quality-related health damages of maize (Nature Sustainability)

[customerserviceguy]

1. So, which one of our intrepid candidates

is going to take that message to Iowa?

[hunter]

2. The world would be a better place if people reduced their consumption of factory farm...

... meat and dairy products, especially those dependent on corn, and reduced their consumption of sweeteners, both corn and sugar cane.

Using corn ethanol as a fuel is an especially bad idea.

I'm okay if maize farmers are bought out and their land restored to natural prairie and forest, or productive semi-natural grazing land and a patchwork of corn and soybeans sold for human consumption.

The cost of hamburger, a gallon of milk, or high fructose corn syrup soft drinks is of no consequence in my life because I don't buy any of those things, and they have no impact on my personal happiness.

When we were raising our children we bought milk by the gallon because we'd unconsciously accepted U.S.A. dietary norms (even though my wife is lactose intolerant) but I wouldn't do it again if I was starting over.

Mile after mile of chemically and genetically enhanced corn fields, drenched in pesticides and herbicides, are wastelands. I'm not running for national office, so I'm free to speak my mind.

[The_jackalope]

3. If we would only reduce...

...the number of people on the planet by 99.9%, the world's environmental problems would all be solved.

Not possible, you say? I'm quite sure Mother Nature can figure out a way to do it.
Oh well. So long, it's been good to know you.