Switching to a plant-based diet means cleaner air and could save more than 200,000 lives worldwide, study finds

Adopting a healthier diet will likely feature high on many of our New Year’s resolutions. But it’s often difficult for people to live up to their intentions.

But there are good reasons to persist in making deliberate choices about what’s on your plate. These choices not only impact your own health, but also the health of the planet.

Food systems account for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. If left unchecked, these emissions would likely add enough additional warming to push Earth’s average temperature beyond a 1.5°C increase in the 2060s.

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

Our recent study, published in Natural communicationsreveals that switching from current diets to healthier, plant-based diets could prevent up to 236,000 premature deaths worldwide and increase global GDP, simply by improving air quality.

Healthier food, cleaner air

According to the World Health Organization, 4 million premature deaths were linked to outdoor air pollution in 2019. Agriculture is responsible for around a fifth of these deaths.

We studied what would happen to air quality if people around the world adopted healthier, more environmentally friendly diets. This includes flexitarian diets with less meat, vegetarian diets without meat, and vegan diets without animal products.

Our results show that adopting a plant-based diet could significantly reduce air pollution. Areas where there are a lot of livestock, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, northern Italy, southern China, and the west-central United States (in Iowa there are eight pigs for each person), would experience particularly pronounced reductions in the concentration of fine particles.

Better air quality leads to better health. We found that more than 100,000 premature deaths could be avoided worldwide by adopting flexitarian diets. The health gains from cleaner air add to the benefits gained from a more balanced diet.

These health benefits increase as people consume fewer animal products. For example, if everyone became vegan, the number of premature deaths from air pollution could decrease by more than 200,000. In Europe and North America, adopting a vegan diet could reduce about 20% premature deaths due to air pollution.

Clean air is an often overlooked but important aspect of the work environment. Research has shown 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 suggest that cleaner air can have a positive impact on the economy. We found that a transition to a vegan diet could increase global GDP by more than 1%, a gain of US$1.3 trillion.

Allow change

Improving air quality is undoubtedly beneficial for our health and the economy. We argue that dietary changes should therefore be firmly on the political menu.

Adopting a more plant-based diet is a cost-effective strategy to combat 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.

Eating less meat would also reduce the need to take other, more drastic measures to combat pollution. For example, researchers have already suggested moving 10 billion animals away from southern and eastern China to reduce ammonia exposure for people in those regions.

Switching to a healthier, more plant-based diet offers a wide range of benefits beyond clean air. These benefits include a lower risk of diet-related illnesses, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced use of land, water, and fertilizers for agriculture.

Achieving ambitious progress in all of these areas at the same time will be a challenge if we rely solely on technological solutions.

During the summer of 2023, the German supermarket chain Penny conducted a week-long experiment to raise awareness of the real cost of food products on people’s health and the environment. Prices charged to customers took into account the impact of food products on soil, water consumption, health and the climate.

This concept could be applied more widely. But for this policy to be fair and acceptable, it must be combined with ways of using tax revenue to ensure that consumers are not worse off, such as by reducing VAT on fruit and vegetables and by compensating vulnerable households. In this way, overall food expenditure would be controlled and low-income households would be protected.

Combined with measures to guide farmers through the transition, our food systems can be geared towards sustainability, helping people keep their New Year’s resolutions.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.