The effects of gases from food waste on human health: A systematic review

TL;DR

This study reviews how gases from food waste affect human health, highlighting risks and suggesting solutions to reduce emissions.

Contribution

The paper provides a systematic review of health impacts from food waste emissions, identifying knowledge gaps and offering a baseline for public health decisions.

Findings

Emissions like hydrogen sulphide and ammonia from food waste can harm respiratory, endocrine, and nervous systems.

Health effects range from mild irritation to severe outcomes like cancer and death, depending on gas concentration.

The study recommends emission capture and biogas technologies to mitigate health risks from food waste.

Abstract

Food waste is a routine and increasingly growing global concern that has drawn significant attention from policymakers, climate change activists and health practitioners. Amid the plurality of discourses on food waste-health linkages, however, the health risks from food waste induced emissions have remained under explored. This lack of evidence is partly because of the lack of complete understanding of the effects of food waste emissions from household food waste on human health either directly through physiological mechanisms or indirectly through environmental exposure effects. Thus, this systematic review contributes to the literature by synthesizing available evidence to highlight gaps and offers a comprehensive baseline inventory of food waste emissions and their associated impacts on human health to support public health decision-making. Four database searches: Web of Science, OVID(Medline), EMBASE, and Scopus, were searched from inception to 3 May 2023. Pairs of reviewers screened 2189 potentially eligible studies that addressed food waste emissions from consumers and how the emissions related to human health. Following PRISMA guidelines, 26 articles were eligible for data extraction for the systematic review. Findings indicate that emissions from food waste, such as hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, and volatile organic carbons, can affect human endocrine, respiratory, nervous, and olfactory systems. The severity of the human health effects depends on the gaseous concentration, but range from mild lung irritation to cancer and death. This study recommends emission capture technologies, food diversion programs, and biogas technologies to reduce food waste emissions.

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