Background: There is a growing interest in the impact of air pollution from livestock farming on respiratory health. Studies in adults suggest adverse effects of livestock farm emissions on lung function, but so far, studies involving children and adolescents are lacking.
Objectives: To study the association of residential proximity to livestock farms and modelled particulate matter ≤10 μm (PM) from livestock farms with lung function in adolescence.
Unlabelled: Legionnaires Disease incidence has risen in the Netherlands in recent years. For the majority of the cases, the source of infection is never identified. Two Dutch wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have previously been identified as source of outbreaks of Legionnaires Disease (LD) among local residents.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The aim of this study is to assess whether medication use for obstructive airway diseases is associated with environmental exposure to livestock farms. Previous studies in the Netherlands at a regional level suggested that asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are less prevalent among persons living near livestock farms.
Methods: A nationwide population-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 7,735,491 persons, with data on the dispensing of drugs for obstructive airway diseases in the Netherlands in 2016.
Observed multiple adverse effects of livestock production have led to increasing calls for more sustainable livestock production. Quantitative analysis of adverse effects, which can guide public debate and policy development in this area, is limited and generally scattered across environmental, human health, and other science domains. The aim of this study was to bring together and, where possible, quantify and aggregate the effects of national-scale livestock production on 17 impact categories, ranging from impacts of particulate matter, emerging infectious diseases and odor annoyance to airborne nitrogen deposition on terrestrial nature areas and greenhouse gas emissions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWeather and climate models struggle to represent lower tropospheric temperature and moisture profiles and surface fluxes in Arctic winter, partly because they lack or misrepresent physical processes that are specific to high latitudes. Observations have revealed two preferred states of the Arctic winter boundary layer. In the cloudy state, cloud liquid water limits surface radiative cooling, and temperature inversions are weak and elevated.
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