Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution exposure is the largest environmental health risk factor in the United States. Here, we link PM2.5exposure to the human activities responsible for PM2.5pollution. We use these results to explore “pollution inequity”: the difference between the environmental health damage caused by a racial–ethnic group and the damage that group experiences. We show that, in the United States, PM2.5exposure is disproportionately caused by consumption of goods and services mainly by the non-Hispanic white majority, but disproportionately inhaled by black and Hispanic minorities. On average, non-Hispanic whites experience a “pollution advantage”: They experience ∼17% less air pollution exposure than is caused by their consumption. Blacks and Hispanics on average bear a “pollution burden” of 56% and 63% excess exposure, respectively, relative to the exposure caused by their consumption. The total disparity is caused as much by how much people consume as by how much pollution they breathe. Differences in the types of goods and services consumed by each group are less important. PM2.5exposures declined ∼50% during 2002–2015 for all three racial–ethnic groups, but pollution inequity has remained high.

Farmer profit can be increased and air quality improved

In the early 21st century the extensive clearing of forestland, fresh water scarcity, and sharp rises in the price of food have become causes for concern. These concerns may be substantially exacerbated over the next few decades by the need to provide improved diets for a growing global population. This study applies an inter-regional input-output model of the world economy, the World Trade Model, for analysis of alternative scenarios about satisfying future food requirements by midcentury. The scenario analysis indicates that relying only on more extensive use of arable land and fresh water would require clearing forests and exacerbating regional water scarcities. However, a combination of less resource-intensive diets and improved agricultural productivity, the latter especially in Africa, could make it possible to use these resources sustainably while also constraining increases in food prices. Unlike the scenario outcomes from other kinds of economic models, our framework reveals the potential for a decisive shift of production and export of agricultural products away from developed countries toward Africa and Latin America. Although the assumed changes in diets and technologies may not be realizable without incentives, our results suggest that these regions exhibit comparative advantages in agricultural production due to their large remaining resource endowments and their potential for higher yields.

Understanding how to source agricultural raw materials sustainably is challenging in today’s globalized food system given the variety of issues to be considered and the multitude of suggested indicators for representing these issues. Furthermore, stakeholders in the global food system both impact these issues and are themselves vulnerable to these issues, an important duality that is often implied but not explicitly described. The attention given to these issues and conceptual frameworks varies greatly—depending largely on the stakeholder perspective—as does the set of indicators developed to measure them. To better structure these complex relationships and assess any gaps, we collate a comprehensive list of sustainability issues and a database of sustainability indicators to represent them. To assure a breadth of inclusion, the issues are pulled from the following three perspectives: major global sustainability assessments, sustainability communications from global food companies, and conceptual frameworks of sustainable livelihoods from academic publications. These terms are integrated across perspectives using a common vocabulary, classified by their relevance to impacts and vulnerabilities, and categorized into groups by economic, environmental, physical, human, social, and political characteristics. These issues are then associated with over 2,000 sustainability indicators gathered from existing sources. A gap analysis is then performed to determine if particular issues and issue groups are over or underrepresented. This process results in 44 “integrated” issues—24 impact issues and 36 vulnerability issues —that are composed of 318 “component” issues. The gap analysis shows that although every integrated issue is mentioned at least 40% of the time across perspectives, no issue is mentioned more than 70% of the time. A few issues infrequently mentioned across perspectives also have relatively few indicators available to fully represent them. Issues in the impact framework generally have fewer gaps than those in the vulnerability framework.

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