Externalities of air pollution: Estimates for heart diseases

✍ Scribed by Rajindar K. Koshal; Manjulika Koshal

• Book ID: 104741244
• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1980
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 531 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0303-8300
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00364602

✦ Synopsis

This study attempts to establish a quantitative relationship between air pollution and heart diseases. It proposes that in addition to air pollution, population density, sunshine, racial composition, age composition, and income are important variables to explain the variations in the death rates due to heart diseases in the urban areas of the United States. The analysis suggests that a fifty percent decrease in the air pollution would imply a decrease in the mortality rate by about 24-35 percent. Such a reduction in the air pollution level would be accompanied by a social savings of the order of $2140 to $3130 million per year in terms of the heart diseases only. Social savings in terms of all diseases would obviously be of a much higher order.