Ammonia pollution hotspots have been identified in areas with some of the greatest numbers of intensive pig and poultry farms in Britain, research has revealed.
A new map for the first time reveals the most severe concentrations of ammonia emissions are clustered in Lincolnshire, Herefordshire and Norfolk. These regions all have a high density of intensive poultry and pig units that drive dangerous levels of ammonia, according to researchers from Compassion in World Farming (CiWF) and Sustain.
The research comes as the government attempts to rewrite planning rules to make it easier to build intensive livestock farms despite concerns about water pollution, air quality and local opposition, the Guardian revealed earlier this month.
Ammonia emissions are dangerous to human health and the environment. In the UK, agriculture is responsible for 89% of national emissions of the nitrogen-based gas used to produce fertilisers and released from livestock manure. Industrial intensive animal farming increases the environmental and health burdens associated with ammonia, CiWF says in a report published on Thursday alongside the map.
Once in the air, ammonia reacts with other pollutants to form particulate matter – PM2.5, which is considered one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution. The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) estimated human-made PM2.5 exposure was responsible for between 28,861 and 29,000 premature deaths in the UK in 2010.
Modelling shows that reducing agricultural emissions could dramatically cut mortality rates.
Dr Amir Khan, a GP and patron of CiWF, said: “As a GP, I see first-hand the toll that air pollution takes on people’s health – and ammonia from intensive farming is a major, yet often overlooked, part of that problem.
“The fine particulate matter formed from ammonia exposure drives heart disease, stroke, asthma and chronic lung conditions, and it is our most vulnerable patients who pay the price.”
Released into the environment, excess nitrogen from ammonia deposition acidifies soils and pollutes rivers. In Shropshire, campaigners recently blocked permission for a poultry megafarm by successfully arguing the council had failed to take into account all the environmental impacts of an industrial unit containing 230,000 chickens at any one time when it granted planning permission.
A rise in large intensive poultry units, known as IPUs, in the valleys of the Rivers Wye and Severn is a key cause of river pollution as chicken droppings contain more phosphates – which starve fish and river plants of oxygen – than any other animal manure.
The map published on Thursday is an estimation of ammonia produced by industrial livestock units.
Calculations were derived from permitted stocking numbers and average ammonia production factors for different categories of livestock, such as broiler chickens, indoor eggs, and pigs.
Michele Franks, who lives near a poultry megafarm in Lincolnshire told researchers emissions regularly force her indoors, triggering chest tightness, eye irritation and breathing difficulties during shed clean-outs that can last up to five days at a time.
“When the chicken sheds are cleaned out, the smell and the polluted air hits me straight away – my chest tightens, my eyes sting, and I have to shut every window in my house just to cope,” she said. “I’m asthmatic, and for days I can’t even step into my own garden. They say escape to the country for cleaner air but no one should have to live sandwiched between industrial units that make them gasp for breath.”
CiWF and Sustain are calling for an end to the expansion of factory farming.
Anthony Field, head of Compassion in World Farming UK, said: “Factory farming sits at the heart of the UK’s ammonia crisis.
“By cramming large numbers of animals into confined spaces and relying heavily on fertilisers, these intensive systems release far more ammonia than the environment or our bodies can cope with. The result is a cascade of harm – to the animals living in these conditions, to the people breathing the polluted air, and to the ecosystems absorbing the excess nitrogen.”
