Health and environmental consequences of crop residue burning correlated with increasing crop yields midst India’s Green Revolution

Huang, T., Ma, J., Song, S. et al. Health and environmental consequences of crop residue burning correlated with increasing crop yields midst India’s Green Revolution. npj Clim Atmos Sci 5, 81 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-022-00306-x

The Green Revolution (GR) enhances crop yields significantly that contributes greatly to the social and economic development of many less developed countries. However, the increasing crop yields might rise crop residue biomass burning, leading to adverse environmental and health consequences. We assess the impact of crop residue burning associated with the GR-induced growing crop yields on benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) pollution, a congener of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with strong carcinogenicity. We find a significant increasing trend of BaP emission and contamination from crop residue biomass burning from the mid-1960s to 2010s in India, coinciding with the growing crop yields occurring during the GR. Our results reveal that agricultural BaP emission driven lifetime lung cancer risk (ILCR) in India increased 2.6 times from the onset of GR in the mid-1960s to 2014 and the 57% population in India was exposed to the BaP level higher than the India national standard (1 ng m⁻³). We show that the reduction of open crop residue burning during the rice and wheat residue burning period would be a very effective measure to reduce BaP environmental contamination and health risk.