CHAPEL HILL -- Detailed surveys of people living in three rural North Carolina communities suggest industrial hog farms both reduce the quality of life for people living near them and adversely affect their health, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study concludes.
Funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences' Environmental Justice program, researchers completed 155 interviews with people living near a 6,000-head hog operation, two adjacent cattle farms and, as a control, a farm area without large livestock operations.
"In particular, headache, runny nose, sore throat, excessive coughing, diarrhea and burning eyes were reported more frequently in the hog community," said Dr. Steven Wing, associate professor of epidemiology at the UNC-CH School of Public Health. "Quality of life, as indicated by the number of times residents could not open their windows or go outside even in nice weather, was similar in the control and the community in the vicinity of the cattle operation but greatly reduced among residents near the hog operation."
Two papers Wing and colleagues wrote on their research appear in the March issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, a scientific journal. The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, which also supported the studies, released preliminary findings last year, but researchers have added further analyses. Others involved include research associate Susanne Wolf and graduate research assistant Dana Cole, both at UNC-CH, and Gary Grant, director of Concerned Citizens of Tillery, a community group.
The researchers' goal was to choose three eastern N.C. areas with similar economic and social characteristics where local residents and groups would cooperate in the study. They chose sites with 80 to 100 households within a two-mile radius of livestock operations so they could interview people in about 50 households in each community.
Residents of the hog community could have reported more symptoms because of their feelings about the negative impact of the hog operation on their community, Wing said. However, if that had occurred, researchers would have expected excess reports of most symptoms, not just some.
"In fact, the eight symptoms in the miscellaneous category, none of which were expected to be related to exposure to airborne emissions, occurred with about the same frequency in the hog and control communities," Wing said. "This suggests that there was not a tendency for over-reporting among residents of the hog community."
About two-thirds of people questioned by trained interviewers were women. Just over 90 percent were black, and most of the rest were white. Average annual family income was about $20,000.
By far the biggest differences between the communities were seen in the quality-of-life questions, researchers found. More than half of respondents in the hog community, as compared to fewer than a fifth in the other two areas, reported not being able to open windows or go outside even in nice weather 12 or more times over the previous six months.
"Dr. Wing's research on how hog operations are affecting the health of our communities in eastern North Carolina contributes greatly to our understanding of how large animal operations impact our environment and public health," said Irene McFarland, staff attorney for the North Carolina Public Interest Research Group.
"While those living near hog operations have long known that their health was being impacted, until Dr. Wing's study, the affected communities lacked the documentation to prove the extent to which their health has been jeopardized," McFarland said. "Now that we have data establishing the scope of the harms communities are experiencing we need to take action by enacting stronger laws to protect our health and the environment from agricultural pollution."
Long-term physical and mental health impacts could not be investigated in the study, researchers said.
"In North Carolina there are approximately 2,500 intensive hog operations, and they are located disproportionately in areas that are poor and nonwhite," Wing said. "The public health and environmental injustice implications of this geographical pattern extend beyond the physiologic impact of airborne emissions to issues of well-water contamination and the negative impact of noxious odors on community economic development."
Note: Wing can be reached at (919) 966-7416.
Contacts: David Williamson, 962-8596, or Dennis Baker at 962-0352.
Journal
Environmental Health Perspectives