Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark.
Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark.
Sci Total Environ. 2017 Jul 15;590-591:452-460. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.01.117. Epub 2017 Mar 8.
Livestock manure is commonly applied on agricultural land for its fertilising properties. However, the presence of toxic substances in animal manure such as pathogens, antibiotics and heavy metals, can result in damages to ecosystems and human health. To date, although relevant for policy-making, e.g. regulation framing, their releases to agricultural land have been incompletely and inconsistently quantified at global and national scales. Here, we thus developed a generic framework for estimating such releases based on the quantities of manure applied and concentrations of toxic substances. Applying this framework, we built a global release inventory for arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, mercury, nickel, lead and zinc differentiated into 215 countries and 15years (period 2000-2014). Comparisons with more narrowly-focused inventories showed overall consistency in our inventory results, although a number of uncertainties and limitations were identified. In particular, the need for harmonising sampling and analytical methods for estimating heavy metal contents in manure and generating more country-differentiated data, especially for developing countries, should be prioritised by future research studies. Using life cycle impact assessment methods, it was additionally found that mercury, zinc and copper are the substances contributing the most to the toxic impacts on human health and freshwater ecosystems resulting from manure application to land. While countries such as China, India, Russia, Brazil and the United States of America contributed to half the heavy metal releases from manure application worldwide, the impact intensity per area of agricultural land was observed to be highest for island countries, the European Union and South-East Asia because of higher per-area applications of manure. These findings demonstrate the need to perform country-specific impact assessment to support policy-making regulating the concentrations of toxic substances such as heavy metals in utilised manure.
牲畜粪便通常因其肥沃特性而应用于农业土地。然而，动物粪便中存在的有毒物质，如病原体、抗生素和重金属，会对生态系统和人类健康造成损害。迄今为止，尽管这些物质对于政策制定很重要，例如法规框架的制定，但它们在全球和国家层面上向农业土地的释放量尚未得到完整和一致的量化。因此，我们在此开发了一种基于施用的粪便量和有毒物质浓度来估算此类释放的通用框架。应用该框架，我们构建了一个针对砷、镉、铬、铜、汞、镍、铅和锌的全球释放清单，区分了 215 个国家和 15 年（2000-2014 年）。与更狭义的清单相比，我们的清单结果总体上具有一致性，尽管确定了一些不确定性和局限性。特别是，需要优先进行协调采样和分析方法，以估算粪便中重金属含量并生成更多国家区分的数据，特别是发展中国家。通过使用生命周期影响评估方法，还发现汞、锌和铜是导致因粪便施用于土地而对人类健康和淡水生态系统产生有毒影响的主要物质。尽管中国、印度、俄罗斯、巴西和美国等国家贡献了全球一半以上的粪便中重金属的释放，但观察到农业土地每单位面积的影响强度最高的是岛国、欧盟和东南亚，因为这些地区每单位面积的粪便施用量更高。这些发现表明，需要进行特定国家的影响评估，以支持监管利用粪便中重金属等有毒物质浓度的政策制定。
