With pork chops come particulates.

So says a study from the University of Iowa, suggesting that what we suspected is true: Living next to a hog confinement is not good for one’s health.

Researchers found that particles and vapors rising from manure lagoons can make confinement workers sick in less than three hours.

Neighbors to these sprawling hog lots face the same danger from bits of pig feces carried on the otherwise-sweet Iowa breeze.

It brings an interesting shift to the “pork or not to pork” debate.

No longer can city folk ignore the problem rural residents deal with on a regular basis.

The airborne effluent from hog lots, in the end, might harm humans more seriously than do manure spills, and it’s not going to stay in the country.

So what do we do?

Iowa’s pork industry leads the nation in output and is, undeniably, a pillar of the state’s economy.

We’re not going to ban hog lots. But we should slow them down.

A little-known fact: There aren’t any more hogs in Iowa now (15 million) than 25 years ago, according to Sunday’s Des Moines Register.

The change has come in their arrangement — more and more, the squealers are clustered into corporate lots, where the emphasis is on enlarged profits rather than the environment.

It must be noted that not all large-scale hog confinements are fouling our streams or groundwater. But these fetid manure lagoons, regardless of size, spew ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, and common sense says that bigger pits emit a heavier concentration of harmful substances.

A possible solution is found in hoop houses.

These are long, low buildings with a fabric tarp stretched over a curved roof, hence the name. Inside live the pigs, leaving their excrement in a bed of silage which is carried out after every production cycle and used as composted fertilizer.

Voila! No uncontrollable amounts of liquid manure.

And wouldn’t you know it, hoop houses are one-third as expensive to build as traditional confinements.

Even better, one scientist says the little piggies like to play in the straw and cornstalks.

Seems simple, doesn’t it? Lower costs, happier porkers and less danger to people.

All that remains is for farmers to figure it out.