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

Abstract

Air pollution (AP) is one of the major causes of health risks as it leads to widespread morbidity and mortality each year. Its environmental impacts include acid rains, reduced visibility, but more importantly and significantly, it affects human health. The price tag of not managing AP is seen in the rise of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cardiovascular disease, and respiratory ailments like asthma and chronic bronchitis. But as the world battles the corona pandemic, COVID-19 lockdown has abruptly halted human activity, leading to a significant reduction in AP levels. The effect of this reduction is captured by reduced cases of morbidity and mortality associated with air pollution. The current study aims to monetarily quantify the decline in health impacts due to reduced AP levels under lockdown scenario, as against business as usual, for four cities-Delhi, London, Paris, and Wuhan. The exposure assessment with respect to pollutants like particulate matter (PM 2.5 and PM 10 ), NO 2 , and SO 2 are evaluated. Value of statistical life (VSL), cost of illness (CoI), and per capita income (PCI) for disability-adjusted life years (DALY) are used to monetize the health impacts for the year 2019 and 2020, considering the respective period of COVID-19 lockdown of four cities. The preventive benefits related to reduced AP due to lockdown is evaluated in comparison to economic damage sustained by these four cities. This helps in understanding the magnitude of actual damage and brings out a more holistic picture of the damages related to lockdown.

Understanding COVID-19 transmission through Bayesian probabilistic modeling and GIS-based Voronoi approach: a policy perspective

“…By the end of December 2019, the novel coronavirus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was found to originate from Wuhan, Hubei Province, China (Huang et al 2020;Bherwani et al 2020). Similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) caused by novel coronavirus has been recognized from the zoonotic origin and usually causes respiratory disease as an onset symptom (Guo et al 2020).…”

Air pollution improvement and mortality rate during COVID-19 pandemic in India: global intersectional study

“…Within 3 months, more than a hundred countries had infected the virus (WHO 2020a, b). The outbreak in COVID-19 infections around the world has turned it into a worldwide pandemic, with catastrophic effects (Wang et al 2020;Bherwani et al 2020). There have been over 1.3 million reported cases in 31 cities in the USA, and nearly 80,000 fatalities.…”

Spread of COVID-19, Meteorological Conditions and Air Quality in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina: Two Facets Observed during Its Pandemic Lockdown

“…Pandemic lockdown is a critical time due to infected people with SARS-CoV-2, increasing cases of death, and economic damage [7]. However, it has generated a window to analyze the correlation between rapidly spreading viral diseases like COVID-19 with weather and air quality indicators.…”