A number of studies have been initiated in recent years in Australia and elsewhere in the developed world with the objective of costing the health and environmental impacts of ambient concentrations of air pollution. These studies are largely in response to the mounting epidemiological evidence that exposure to air pollutants can be harmful to humans. Many of these studies have attempted to link the extent of life lost and the socioeconomic characteristics of those at greatest risk to air pollution. From that analysis, estimates of the economic cost have been derived. This paper is largely drawn from a forthcoming Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics (BTRE) study and is an attempt to quantify the economic costs of the health effects of transport emissions in Australian capital cities. It uses epidemiology-based exposure-response functions to derive an attributable number of health cases, and applies a BTRE-refined human capital approach to derive economic costs. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E210413.
Samenvatting