Health Outcomes

• Multiple

Health Outcome List:

• Mortality (post-neonatal infant mortality, adult mortality)
• Respiratory outcomes (chronic bronchitis, bronchitis in children, hospital admissions for respiratory diseases)
• Cardiovascular outcomes (hospitalizations for cardiovascular diseases)
• Morbidity (restricted activity days, work days lost, minor restricted activity dates, annoyance from noise)

Environmental Agents

List of Environmental Agents:

• Air pollutants (particulate matter (PM2.5/fine), particulate matter (PM10), ozone (O3))

Source of Environmental Agents:

• Future coal mining and use of coal in electricity and heat generation

Economic Evaluation / Methods and Source

Type:

• Cost analysis (CA)

Cost Measures:

• Willingness to pay to avoid shortened life expectancy
• Costs of restricted activity days, work days lost, minor restricted activity days

Potential Cost Measures:

• Not available

Benefits Measures:

• Not available

Potential Benefits Measures:

• Not available

Location:

• Czech Republic and other European Union countries

Models Used:

• ExternE, an impact-pathway methodology

Models References:

• References cited in publication —ExternE (Bickel et al., 2004)

Methods Used:

• This study examined external costs of coal mining and subsequent use of extracted coal for electricity and heat generation in the Czech Republic and other European countries. The authors: — 1) used the impact-pathway methodology called ExternE for a bottom-up environmental health impact assessment of emissions of airborne pollution and noise from coal mining and from coal-fired power plants; 2) estimated airborne and noise emissions from coal mining using local scale dispersion models; 3) used a regional scale dispersion model of airborne emissions from coal burning in coal-fired heating and power plants; 4) obtained concentration-response functions from other studies for health effects and annoyance from noise exposure; 5) collected background data (e.g., population age distribution, mortality and morbidity incidences) from multiple data sources that were included in the EcoSenseWeb model; 6) monetized impacts using values for health endpoints transferred from EU-wide unit values from other studies; 7) calculated results for four scenarios including impacts on Czech Republic nationals only, Czechs and neighboring countries, EU-wide population, and worldwide; and 8) adjusted EU-wide monetary values to be country-specific based on relative per capita gross domestic product at purchasing power.

Sources Used:

• A subset of concentration-response functions from the Health Risks of Air Pollution in Europe (HRAPIE) project (WHO, 2015); exposure-response functions for annoyance from noise (Miedema et al., 2004); Monetary and non-monetary measures of health benefits from exposure reduction (Scasny and Maca, 2016); Cost-benefit analysis of final policy scenarios for the EU Clearn Air Package (Holland, 2014); Willingness to pay values from earlier multi-country valuation studies (Desaigues et al., 2011; Ready et al., 2004); additional sources cited in the publication

Economic Citation / Fundings

Citation:

• Maca V, Melichar J, Scasny M, Kohlova MB. Valuing environmental health for informed policy-making. Reviews on Environmetal Health. 2017. 32; 2-Jan.
• Pubmed
• DOI

NIEHS Funding:

• R13ES026036

Other Funding:

• Manuscript preparation was supported by PRVOUK-PO2 programme of Charles University