Dietary shifts can reduce premature deaths related to particulate matter pollution in China.

Shifting towards more meat-intensive diets may have indirect health consequences through environmental degradation. Here we examine how trends in dietary patterns in China over 1980-2010 have worsened fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) pollution, thereby inducing indirect health impacts. We show that changes in dietary composition alone, mainly by driving the rising demands for meat and animal feed, have enhanced ammonia (NH 3 ) emissions from Chinese agriculture by 63% and increased annual PM 2.5 by up to ~10 µg m -3 (~20% of total PM 2.5 increase) over the period. Such effects are more than double that driven by increased food production solely due to population growth. Shifting the current diet towards a less meat-intensive recommended diet can decrease NH 3 emission by ~17% and PM 2.5 by 2-6 µg m -3 , and avoid ~75,000 Chinese annual premature deaths related to PM 2.5 .