EspañolA study reveals that farming is responsible for more than a quarter of the particle pollution in UK cities.
UK agriculture created 38% of the particle pollution in Leicester, 32% in Birmingham and 25% in London in 2019, according to the study. In each case the contribution from rural agriculture was greater than all of the sources within the cities themselves.
Fig. 8. Source contributions to annual mean PM2.5 in Birmingham (green) and London (purple). Shading and vertical lines distinguish local, national, and international sources (see Table 1 for details). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Fig. 4. Spatial distribution of simulated source contributions to annual mean total PM2.5 concentrations. These are (A) traffic, (B) agriculture, (C) anthropogenic dust, (D) continental Europe, (E) ships, and (F) natural dust (see Table 1 for details). Inset values are UK means and, in parentheses, ranges (min to max) for UK land grids. Locations of Leicester, Birmingham, and London city centres are indicated in A.
