Health Impacts of Industrial Hog Farms.

Detailed surveys of people living in three rural North Carolina communities suggest that industrial hog farms reduce the quality of life and adversely affect the health of people living nearby. In the course of the study, which was conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was funded by the Environmental Justice program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, researchers completed 155 interviews. Survey participants included people who lived near a 6,000-head hog operation, people who lived near two adjacent cattle farms, and, as a control, people who lived in a farm area without large livestock operations.

The research was written up in two papers, which appear in the March 2000 issue of Environmental Perspectives. "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 group and in the community near the cattle operation, but it was greatly reduced among residents near the hog operation."

The researchers do not believe that residents of the hog community reported more symptoms simply because of their feelings about the negative impact of the hog operation on their community. If that had occurred, participants would have reported an excess 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 to overreport 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 among the communities were seen in the quality-of-life questions. More than half of respondents in the hog community as compared with fewer than a fifth in each of the other two areas, reported that 12 times or more over the previous six months, they had not been able to open windows or go outside even in nice weather.

The study did not assess long-term physical and mental health impacts.

"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."