POST NUMERO UNO PROVA

 

This study investigates the health-related social costs of air pollution in 432 European cities in 30 countries (the EU27 plus the UK, Norway and Switzerland). Social costs are costs affecting welfare and comprise both direct health care expenditures (e.g. for hospital admissions) and indirect health impacts (e.g. diseases such as COPD, or reduced life expectancy due to air pollution). These impacts affect welfare because people have a clear preference for healthy life years in a good and clean environment. As a clean environment is not something that can be bought in the marketplace, however, a robust methodology is required to monetize them in order to quantify the wider public health impacts. 

Environmental economists have performed numerous studies to quantify the impacts of air pollution on health and monetize these as social costs. These studies were used to develop the methodological framework adopted in the present study, which encompasses sixteen health impacts attributable to air pollution by fine particulate matter, ozone and nitrogen oxides (Table 2, Page 15). Using data on reported air quality in the Urban Audit statistics and the EEA Air Quality network, the physical impacts on human health were quantified using concentration-response functions based on the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO). The physical impacts were subsequently monetized using a valuation framework developed in the peer-reviewed Handbook of External Costs published by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport, DG MOVE. The resulting social costs incurred in a specific city were then determined from the air pollution levels reported there and th