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Worldwide, agriculture is the No. 2 cause of soot and smog deaths with 664,100 deaths


"Air pollution is killing 3.3 million people worldwide....The study projects that if trends don't change, the yearly death total will double to about 6.6 million a year by 2050."

"Worldwide, agriculture is the No. 2 cause [of soot and smog deaths] with 664,100 deaths." In 2010, the US ranked seventh highest in the world for air pollution deaths with 54, 905 deaths. "What's unusual is that the study says that agriculture caused 16,221 of those deaths, second only to 16,929 deaths blamed on power plants."

"The problem with farms is ammonia from fertilizer and animal waste... That ammonia then combines with sulfates from coal-fired power plants and nitrates from car exhaust to form the soot particles that are the big air pollution killers."

Seth Borenstein, "Air Pollution Is Responsible For 3.3 Million Deaths Every Year," Huffington Post, Sept. 17, 2015, accessed Sept. 18, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/section/healthy-living

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