Sarah M McGhee, Chit Ming Wong, Anthony J Hedley
Department of Community Medicine, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong
Background: In the United States there has been a lot of interest over the years in methods of estimating the cost of air pollution. This now enables valuation of the impacts of new developments, such as transport systems, on air pollution. In the Asia-Pacific region there is very little of this kind of data available.
Aim: To estimate the value of the health effects of air pollution in Hong Kong
Methods: Information on the excess risks due to air pollution of mortality, hospital admission and visits to a doctor in Hong Kong were used to calculate the number of extra deaths, hospital admissions and doctor visits attributable to each 10μg/m 3 of pollutant. Extra deaths were valued at US$1.3 million, working years lost at the median wage and utilisation at the average unit cost. Local survey data was used to estimate how many people considered that air pollution made them cough and a value of US$24 to avoid a cough day, estimated from willingness-to-pay surveys was applied to the estimated number of cough days in a year.
Results: For the current mean ambient levels of pollution, the value of attributable medical care was $204 million, productivity loss $441 million, avoidable cough days $771 million and lives lost, $1.2 billion.
Conclusion: For a population of 6.8 million people, our estimate of the health effects was around $2.6 billion a year. How much is avoidable remains to be assessed. We can now use this data to value the impact on health of proposed new developments.
Presenter: Dr Sarah M McGhee, Associate Professor, Department of Community Medicine, University of Hong Kong.
Address: Department of Community Medicine,
University of Hong Kong
5 th floor, William MW Mong Block, Faculty of Medicine,
21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
e-mail: smmcghee@hkucc.hku.hk,
fax: 852 2855 9528
telephone: 852 2819 9193
Topic: Air pollution and human/environmental health
Keywords: Air pollution, cost of illness, economics