A new study from the British journal PLOS One claimed that human breathing causes global warming.
“Exhaled human breath can contain small, elevated concentrations of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), both of which contribute to global warming,” the study says.
According to the scientists, these gases contribute to 0.05% (CH4) and 0.1% (N20) of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.K.
“Where hydrocarbon chains (food types) are consumed by humans and turned into CH4 (and N2O from nitrogen intake), the global warming potential is no longer neutral, and human respiration has a net warming effect on the atmosphere,” the researchers state.
Despite breathing contributing to less than 1% of emissions, the scientists “would urge caution in the assumption that emissions from humans are negligible.”
“We report only emissions in breath in this study, and flatus emissions are likely to increase these values significantly, though no literature characterises these emissions for people in the UK. Assuming that livestock and other wild animals also exhale emissions of N2O, there may still be a small but significant unaccounted for source of N2O emissions in the UK, which could account for more than 1% of national-scale emissions,” they add.
To analyze the gaseous emissions, the scientists analyzed the breath of 104 volunteers and collected a total of 328 breath samples, noting that “[d]ietary preference was not found to affect CH4 or N2O emissions from breath in this study.”
“Concentration enhancement of both CH4 and N2O in the breath of vegetarians and meat consumers are similar in magnitude,” they explained. “Based on these results, we can state that, when estimating emissions from a population within the UK, diet or future diet changes are unlikely to be important when estimating emissions across the UK as a whole.”
Although the study noted that diet does not have an effect on greenhouse gas emissions, the United Nations (U.N.) is pushing reductions in meat consumption to combat “climate change.”
“The failure of leading meat and dairy companies to reduce emissions underlines the urgent need for more policy focus on the food and agriculture sector,” Jeremy Coller, the chair and founder of the FAIRR Initiative, recently said.
UN officials have reportedly pushed for a plant-based diet to reduce an individual’s annual carbon footprint by up to 2.1 tons.
However, the University of California, Davis, published a study earlier this year that indicated lab-grown or “cultured” meat produced by cultivating animal cells is up to 25 times worse for the climate than natural beef.
