Abstract
Food consumption contributes to the degradation of air quality in regions where food is produced, creating a contrast between the health burden caused by a specific population through its food consumption and that faced by this same population as a consequence of food production activities. Here we explore this inequality within China’s food system by linking air-pollution-related health burden from production to consumption, at high levels of spatial and sectorial granularity. We find that low-income groups bear a 70% higher air-pollution-related health burden from food production than from food consumption, while high-income groups benefit from a 29% lower health burden relative to their food consumption. This discrepancy largely stems from a concentration of low-income residents in food production areas, exposed to higher emissions from agriculture. Comprehensive interventions targeting both production and consumption sides can effectively reduce health damages and concurrently mitigate associated inequalities, while singular interventions exhibit limited efficacy.
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Data availability
The data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and Supplementary Information. Population, residents’ disposable income and food intake data at the site scale from the National Bureau of Statistics of China are available at http://data.stats.gov.cn/. The China MRIO tables are available at http://www.ceads.net/data/input_output_tables/. Livestock feeding data are derived from https://www.fao.org/faostat/. Source data for premature mortalities are accessible via Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10645774.https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10645774.
Code availability
Python 3.8 was used for developing the EEIOA and for data analysis. The source codes used in this study are accessible via Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10645774.https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10645774.
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Acknowledgements
G.S. and H.S. acknowledge funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (2023YFE0112900). H.S. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42192510). F.Z. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42225102). S.T. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41991312, 41821005 and 41830641). T.-M.F. and H.S. acknowledge funding from the Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (JCYJ20220818100611024). G.S. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42077328). X.Y., T.-M.F. and H.S. acknowledge funding from the Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement and Early Warning Technology for Urban Environmental Health Risks (ZDSYS20220606100604008), Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province (2021B1212050024), and Department of Education of Guangdong Province (2021KCXTD004). H.S. acknowledges support from the Center for Computational Science and Engineering at Southern University of Science and Technology.
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H.S., J.M., P.H. and F.Z. conceived and initiated the study. L. Zheng and W.A. processed and analysed the data. Y.C., P.G., J.H. and Y.Z. provided support with data collection and processing. P.X., C.W., J.Y. and L. Zhu assisted in the development of the model framework. L. Zheng drafted the paper, and G.S., T.-M.F. and X.Y. participated in the result discussions. H.S., F.Z., J.M., P.H., S.Z., A.H., S.T. and A.G.R. provided critical revisions.
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Zheng, L., Adalibieke, W., Zhou, F. et al. Health burden from food systems is highly unequal across income groups. Nat Food 5, 251–261 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-00946-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-00946-7