Is your favorite pizza joint hurting the environment?
Pizza poses a bigger environmental risk than you might think, according to a published in the journal Atmospheric Environment.
While exploring causes of air pollution in聽S茫o Paulo, Brazil, researchers found that restaurants using wood-burning stoves, such as pizzerias and steakhouses, are a significant contributor.
"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," said Prashant Kumar, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Surrey and lead author of the study, in a press release. " or domestic waste burning."聽
Pizza shops are abundant in S茫o Paulo: the self-proclaimed "Pizza Capital of the World" boasts approximately 8,000 pizzerias, which produce nearly a million pizzas a day between them. Pizza is a popular choice for dinner on Sundays, and an especially popular choice on July 10th, which is the city's annual "."
But this feasting comes at a cost. Each month, more than 7.5 hectares (about 18.5 acres) of eucalyptus forest are burned by pizzerias and steakhouses in S茫o Paulo, Dr. Kumar said. In total, that's 307,000 metric tons (a little over 338 US tons) of wood per year sending up emissions.
"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," said co-author Yang Zhang, professor at North Carolina State University. Dr. Zhang was one of the 10 air pollution experts from seven universities who conducted the research, under the umbrella of the University Global Partnership Network.聽
S茫o Paulo聽has a compulsory green biofuel policy for all vehicles: Residents fill their cars with a biofuel comprised of sugarcane ethanol and gasoline (75 percent gasoline and 25 percent ethanol), and soybean biodiesel. But the pollutants created by the megacity's many pizza parlors is "significant enough of a threat to be of real concern to the environment, negating the positive effect" of the biofuel policy, Kumar said.聽
All around the world, it seems that pizza, however potentially polluting, is here to stay. There are 聽alone聽鈥撀燼nd that's 3,425 more than there were in 2013. Of course, most do not use wood-burning ovens.
But given the popularity of pizza, how can we keep our air clean and eat our pizza, too?
One town in Italy attempted to answer that question last December, when it introduced a new ordinance to regulate pizzamakers and other restauranteurs using wood-fired ovens.聽
San Vitaliano, a small town outside Naples,聽has banned the use of wood-fired stoves not equipped with filters that reduce air pollutants.
The announcement was met with outrage from pizzeria owners and residents, who聽held protests and argued that wood-burning stoves were not the of the town's high pollution levels, the BBC reports. Mayor Antonio Falcone, who introduced the ordinance, became known as
The new law went into effect in March, so the long-term effects of the ban are unknown. Pizza ovens aren't the main cause of air pollution in San Vitaliano, Mr. Falcone told The New York Times, but he hopes the filters will at least draw attention to the greater environmental issues at hand.聽
"We鈥檙e the first people who enjoy pizza, but the question is bigger," he said. "There鈥檚 an anthropological disaster in play. The important thing is to make people aware and sensitive."
