Health Benefits Assessment Of Controlling Air Pollution In Hangzhou Using The BenMAP

With the rapidly industrialization and urbanization after Reform and Opening, problems suchas population growth, excessive consumption of resources, ecological destruction andenvironmental pollution have become more prominent and serious impediment to economicdevelopment and improve the quality of people’s lives. At the same time, the air pollution peoplebreathe every moment suffered worsening pollution, its damage to human health has arousedwidespread concern around the world, and especially the assessment of the health effects ofpollutants is the current research focus.This paper firstly combed the research status of the key aspects in health effects assessment-the relationship of air pollution and health impacts and health economic impacts assessment of airpollution, pointing out that the GIS-based BenMAP for the current international context is morecutting-edge assessment model, and its expression analysis flow and principles, etc. are introduced.Based on data from16typical monitoring stations such as Zhaohui Wuqu, Hemu primary school inHangzhou, selecting PM10as indicative pollutant, combining the GIS shape files, population data,incidence data, health impact function and valuation function, with2001as the base year, this thesisthen used BenMAP model to assess human health effects and its corresponding economic valuecaused by air pollution changes in Hangzhou from2002to2010. Finally, based on the results ofempirical analysis, this paper raised some helpful policy recommendations to improve air qualityand increase the level of public health.The main conclusions are as follows:(1) Overall, the health effects and its corresponding economic benefits brought by controllingPM10pollution in Hangzhou from2002to2010increases by year, indicating the benefit on humanhealth from the whole taking in the environmental control policies of Hangzhou in the last tenyears.(2) From the view of Health effects endpoints, the cases of outpatients caused by controllingPM10pollution in Hangzhou from2002to2010accounted for nearly99%of the total health effectcases, while the economic impact of chronic effects accounted for91%of the total economic impact,which further validates the importance of assessing chronic effects in pollution assessment andenvironmental health policy making.(3) Since there are big differences in PM10pollution and exposure of population, etc., healtheffects and their corresponding economic impacts caused by PM10pollution changes in different regions of Hangzhou vary largely, the air quality policymakers should take full account of thesefactors.(4) Children are more sensitive than adults in chronic bronchitis. The health benefits fromimproving PM10pollution in children sensitive population are more significant than in adults, thisrequires the government to distinguish sensitive populations when making environmental policies.