A new study has found that human respiration — especially exhaling — is bad for the environment.
And, no, this is not a repost from the Babylon Bee.
The finding comes from the journal PLoS ONE. The article in question is titled: “Measurements of methane and nitrous oxide in human breath and the development of UK scale emissions.”
To find out if human breath is a threat to the climate, the study examined “328 breath samples [that] were collected indoors in the city of Edinburgh from 104 volunteer participants between 12/12/2022 and 10/03/2023.”
The study found that both younger and older people utilize strategies of respiration to maintain life and as a result both contribute to climate change, though older people are slightly worse offenders. The study also concluded that human emissions other than breath might significantly worsen human biology’s impact on climate.
From the paper:
“Based on a sample population of 104 volunteers, we estimate that the methane producing (MP) population in the UK is 25% for those aged less than 30 years, and 40% for those aged over 30 years of age. We have found no correlation between diet and emission of CH4 and N2O in breath and recommend if future studies wish to assess this in more detail, that rigid dietary regimes are implemented to reduce the effect of heterogeneity of emissions in a given population. While emissions of CH4 and N2O account for only 0.05% and 0.1% of the total emissions in the UK national greenhouse gas inventories, respectively, we would urge caution in the assumption that emissions from humans are negligible. We report only emissions in breath in this study, and flatus emissions are likely to increase these values significantly….”
Citation: Dawson B, Drewer J, Roberts T, Levy P, Heal M, Cowan N (2023) Measurements of methane and nitrous oxide in human breath and the development of UK scale emissions. PLoS ONE 18(12): e0295157. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295157
