Continent with the highest concentration of biomass

Out of a worldwide population of approximately 7 billion, only 6% lives in North America and yet, according to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, between them they comprise 34% of the total human biomass. By way of a contrast, Asia as a whole is home to 61% of the world's population, who between them contribute only 13% of the total human biomass. The scientists who carried out the research that lies at the heart of this claim calculated the total biomass of the human population of the Earth as the product of population size plus average body mass. Their calculations included an estimation of the biomass contributed by overweight and obese people. As a guide to scale, the abstract of the research paper cited below offers this: “One tonne of human biomass corresponds to approximately 12 adults in North America and 17 adults in Asia.”

Researchers took data gathered by the United Nations and the World Health Organisation to derive the figures given here.

They estimated that North America had the highest body mass of any continent with an average of 80.7 kg compared to a global body mass average of 62 kg.