Chapter 12 Health economics of air pollution

Document Type

Book Chapter

Source of Publication

Pollution Assessment for Sustainable Practices in Applied Sciences and Engineering

Publication Date

1-1-2021

Abstract

More important than ever, our communities are confronted with a variety of risks in all domains of activities but especially in health, the environment, disease progression, contagion effects, industrial growth, transportation, as well as occupational safety and health administration. 7 million early deaths each year worldwide with an associated annual economic cost of more than US$3.5 trillion invested by governments worldwide. To reduce healthcare costs, governments and supranational institutions and organizations have spent a huge amount of resources in setting up a nexus of regulations and international coordination, establishing air pollution monitoring networks, regularly reporting air quality information and the respective air quality indices, and communicating to people how polluted the air is. All these initiatives are effective if the expected benefits exceed the cost of their operation. This chapter looks at projections of the cost of air pollution, the impact on human health, and the resultant mortality and morbidity. Both values for the economy and cost of welfare from early deaths and pain and suffering are computed. Additional influences such as biodiversity and other health impacts (e.g., the direct effects of exposure to NO2) cannot be considered as there are still insufficient data, though indoor air pollution is one of the sources of many early deaths. In this chapter, air pollution both indoor and outdoor and its high health and economic outcomes on human beings are discussed and recent research questions and methodologies are explained and examined.

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 38 2013

First Page

639

Last Page

679

Disciplines

Business | Medicine and Health Sciences

Indexed in Scopus

no

Open Access

no

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