When it comes to pizzerias and steakhouses using
wood burners, the environment may be in trouble.
A recent study
points out the underlining pollution causes of the Latin American city of Sao
Paulo in Brazil. This work is a collaborative effort by ten leading air
pollution experts from seven universities, led by the University of Surrey's Dr
Prashant Kumar.
The Latin
American megacity of Sao Paulo is the only megacity worldwide that uses a much
cleaner bio-fuel driven fleet. With about 10 percent of Brazil's total
population, Sao Paulo's inhabitants fill their vehicles with a biofuel
comprising of sugarcane ethanol, gasohol and soya diesel.
Dr Kumar said:
"It became evident from our work that despite there not being the same
high level of pollutants from vehicles in the city as other megacities, there
had not been much consideration of some of the unaccounted sources of
emissions. These include wood burning in thousands of pizza shops or domestic
waste burning."
Despite feijoada
(a pork and bean stew) being the often hailed Brazil's national dish, pizza is
revered by the residents of Sao Paulo. The 'pizza day' is celebrated every July
and the neighbourhood pizzeria is the Sunday dinner with the family venue for
most of the city's residents. People of all ages line up for hours outside
pizzerias every Sunday evening and the city is home to around 8,000 pizza
parlours that produce close to a million pizzas a day and can seat up to around
600 people a time.
In addition to
the 800 pizzas a day being made using old-fashioned wood burning stoves, a
further 1,000 a day are produced for home delivery, with Sunday being the
busiest day of the week.
Dr Kumar
continued, "There are more than 7.5 hectares of Eucalyptus forest being
burned every month by pizzerias and steakhouses. A total of over 307,000 tonnes
of wood is burned each year in pizzerias. This is significant enough of a
threat to be of real concern to the environment negating the positive effect on
the environment that compulsory green biofuel policy has on vehicles."
Co-author Maria
de Fatima added, "Although the huge number of passenger vehicles and
diesel trucks are the dominant contributor to particle emissions, at least we
understand the impact that this is having on the environment and can factor in
solutions. The important contributions to particle emissions gained from
burning of wood and the seasonal burning of sugar cane plantations need to be
accounted in future studies as they are also significant contributors as a
pollutant."
Additional
co-author Yang Zhang explained, "Once in the air, the emitted pollutants
can undergo complex physical and chemical processes to form harmful secondary
pollutants such as ozone and secondary aerosol. While most studies in Brazil
have focused on impacts of vehicle emissions on air quality and human health,
the impacts of emissions from wood/coal burning and meat-cooking in pizzerias
and restaurants are yet to be quantified"
In addition,
another part of the problem is the impact of the neighbouring Amazon
rainforest. Biomass burning from the south southern edge of the forest can be
transported across the Atlantic coast to Brazil and
had to be included in the qualitative assessments of the city air pollution.
The study is
published in the journal Atmospheric Environment.
Representative
Image
Source: ANI
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