Assessment of City Level Human Health Impact and Corresponding Monetary Cost Burden due to Air Pollution in India Taking Agra as a Model City

Abstract

Objectives of the present study are to provide quantitative estimations of air pollution health impacts and monetary burden on people living in Agra city, the fourth most populated city in Uttar Pradesh, India. To estimate the direct health impacts of air pollution in Agra city during year 2002 to 2014, 'Risk of Mortality/Morbidity due to Air Pollution' model was used which is adopted from air quality health impact assessment software, developed by world health organization (WHO). Concentrations of NO 2 , SO 2 and PM 10 have been used to assess human health impacts in terms of attributable proportion of the health outcome as-annual number of excess cases of total mortality, cardiovascular mortality, respiratory mortality, hospital admission chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), hospital admission respiratory disease and hospital admission cardiovascular disease and it was observed that attributable number of cases were 1325, 908, 155, 138, 1230 and 348 respectively in year 2002. However, after thirteen years these figures increased to 1607, 1095, 189, 167, 1568 and 394 respectively. From these results, it was observed that from 2002 to 2014, the attributable number of cases increased almost by 13.43 to 27.52%. As a result, the monetary cost burden due to air pollution related health effects also increased very highly; it was 67.99 million US$ in 2002, which transformed into 254.52 million US$ in 2014. In future, if air quality continues to follow current pollutant concentration trend, the monetary cost burden will reach a level of US$ 570.12 million in year 2020, which is not only a thoughtful matter but also a threatful matter and it signifies the importance of rectification measures for air quality in Agra city.

Air pollution health research priorities for India: Perspectives of the Indo-U.S. Communities of Researchers

“…More recent time-series studies report increased rates of natural all-cause mortality with short-term (daily) exposure to PM 10 in Chennai, Ludhiana, and Delhi (Balakrishnan et al, 2011; Kumar et al, 2010; Rajarathnam et al, 2011). Studies using similar methods have also been reported for other cities and time periods (Dholakia et al, 2014; Maji et al, 2017). The estimates of changes in daily rates of mortality associated with short-term PM exposure observed in these studies are similar to those reported in multi-city studies conducted in China, South Korea, Japan, Europe, and North America (Wong et al, 2008).…”

Valuation of air pollution externalities: comparative assessment of economic damage and emission reduction under COVID-19 lockdown

“…Deteriorated air causes long-and short-term health effects such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, respiratory mortality, cancer, cardiovascular mortality, etc. (Kim et al 2015;Ghorani-Azam et al 2016;Maji et al 2017;Cohen et al 2017;Landrigan et al 2018) among humans. This global threat is considered as one the leading cause for mortality and accounts for 7 million lives every year, estimating a total cost of more than 4% of the GDP (WHO 2020).…”

“…This global threat is considered as one the leading cause for mortality and accounts for 7 million lives every year, estimating a total cost of more than 4% of the GDP (WHO 2020). Extensive studies have been carried out by various researchers (Gulia et al 2015;Maji et al 2017& Maji et al 2018) in heavily polluted cities to quantify the healthrelated monetary burden upon the exposure of human in the deteriorated air environment.…”

A cost–benefit analysis of the environmental taxation policy in China: A frontier analysis‐based environmentally extended input–output optimization method

“…According to the World Bank (2007), health costs, measured in percentage of GDP, can be explained as the monetary value of emission damage or willingness to pay for emission abatement. Thus, like previous articles (e.g., Croitoru & Sarraf, ; Enkhtsolmon, Matsumoto, & Tseveen, ; Maji, Dikshit, & Deshpande, ), we use the concept of health costs to evaluate the abatement benefits of emission reduction. More specifically, we first multiply the health costs by GDP to assess the total health damage related with the actual emission volume.…”