Animal agriculture is a big source of air pollution

• Calculating the environmental damage caused by UK factory farms

What are air pollutants?

• See UK government primer on particulate matter.
  The pollution responsible for most early deaths (at least from agriculture?) are methane and ammonia emissions cause Particulate matter (mainly pm2.5), nitrogen dioxide and ground level ozone

Nitrogen-containing compounds (NO2, NO, NH3, N2O) are emitted to the atmosphere from agricultural activities. In the case of ammonia (NH3) and nitrous oxide (N2O), agricultural sources are the main contributors, comprising 88% and 68% respectively of annual UK emissions in 2016. In addition, agricultural soils are becoming a significant source of nitric oxide (NO) (projected to be 6% of UK NOx emissions by 2030) as emissions from combustion sources are reduced by control measures.

Note nitrogen oxides NOx and nitrous oxides N2O are not the same

• Nitrogen oxides (NOx) refers to nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), both of which are mainly formed during the combustion of fossil fuels. Not much from agriculture but they are bad for human health
• nitrous oxides are potent greenhouse gases that

PM2.5 is the most harmful pollutant to health, and as well as being emitted directly, it can be formed in the atmosphere from reactions between other pollutants such as SO2, NOx, NMVOCs and NH3.

Ground level ozone is often caused by nitrogen oxide emissions.

Air pollution is a huge killer

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution is the biggest environmental risk to health in the European Union (EU). Each year in the EU, it causes about 400 000 premature deaths), and hundreds of billions of euro in health related external costs.

generally it kills you through chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart disease and strokes.

#High_Income_Countries/UK

• In the UK, 2.5% of deaths were attributable to air pollution.
• The mortality burden of the air pollution mixture (based on both particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2)) in the UK, is equivalent to 29,000 to 43,000 deaths

Agriculture is a big source of air pollution

• Pm25 pollution costs the UK £8bn a year according to a 2021 study, of which 60% comes from farms. It's not clear how much of that is animal fertiliser though.
• 87% of ammonia comes from agriculture in the UK, mainly from livestock farming and mineral fertiliser use.

Animal agriculture is a big source of air pollution

• Domingo et al., 2021 finds that 80% of the 15,900 annual deaths in the US that result from food-related fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution are attributable to animal-based foods.
• In the UK, Cattle are the largest source of ammonia, but it is also associated with chicken and pig farms, and with slurry and fertiliser use.

Low meat diets reduce air pollution