Community-level Management of Human Health Risks from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) with Defensive Natural Capital Investments

We propose a multidisciplinary social-ecological (economics, ecological engineering, microbial ecology) modeling and empirical investigation to (i) identify and measure the effect of swine production operations on local human health, (ii) examine if land cover, soil types, hydrographic relationships and public institutions mediate health outcomes and (iii) construct neighborhood-specific recommendations to better enable community-level management of human health risks. We hypothesize that CAFO-linked contaminants cause downstream adverse health outcomes, which are attenuated by natural capital between source contaminants and households. We also hypothesize that households underinvest in risk mitigation because risk is largely inconspicuous in the absence of water and air quality advisories.

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