Press: The crucial link between air pollution and biodiversity loss

News | Posted on Friday 3 July 2020

Kevin Hicks, International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) Europe Director contributed to the July issue of Air Quality News newsletter talking about the impact of ammonia emissions.

Pigs on a farm in East Yorkshire. Photo: Howard Cambridge/SEI

In the article, “The crucial link between air pollution and biodiversity loss”, he highlighted the importance of ammonia emissions that come from agriculture, through the spreading of manures, slurries and fertilisers.

Kevin explained: ‘Let’s say you have a pig; the pig produces manure, which produces ammonia. That ammonia can then go straight up in the air and destroy the woodland next door.

‘Or the ammonia could go up into the atmosphere and be reduced to an ammonium ion, it could then combine with some oxidised nitrogen from the back of a car and form ammonium nitrate, and that could fall onto a bog and cause a competition effect between the plants there.

‘That same molecule could then leave the ecosystem through a stream, and it could travel right down into the sea, causing ocean dead-zones, and from there it can be transformed back into nitrogen and go back into the atmosphere ready to start again.’

 

Read the full article

For all media enquiries please contact:

Frances Dixon
frances.dixon@york.ac.uk
+44 (0) 7859147820
@fdisxonSEI

For all media enquiries please contact:

Frances Dixon

Frances Dixon

Communication Specialist

frances.dixon@york.ac.uk
+44 (0) 7859147820
fdisxonSEI

For all media enquiries please contact:

Frances Dixon
frances.dixon@york.ac.uk
+44 (0) 7859147820
@fdisxonSEI