Study On Health Effects And Economic Loss On Urban Citizens Caused By Air Pollution

The exposure-response relationship between air pollution and health effects of urban residents was built with time-series generized additive model based on the control of season trend, meteorologic factors, and heating period. Moreover, the number of mortality, outpatient and emergency visits of internal medic and the economic losses of these health effects caused by air pollution were calculated by revised human capital method and illness cost method in Beijing and Tangshan in 2004. Main conclusions are as follows:(1)The effect of air pollution on human health presents non-linear relationship. Foreign studies reflect that the exposure-response relationship between air pollution and mortality rate of illness is linear on the condition of relatively low air pollution concentration. However, this study shows that the exposure-response relationship between air pollution and human health effects is non-linear, and likely has critical point threshold under relatively high air pollution concentration.(2)The influence of pollutants on health effect is different. In terms of greatest health effect of all pollutants, if NO2, SO2, PM10 increases by 10ug/m3, mortality of respiratory diseases will increase by 4.1%, 4.0%, 1.4% respectively in Beijing; if NO2, PM10 increases by 10ug/m3,mortality of cardiovascular diseases will increase by 1.6%, 0.2% respectively in Beijing; if NO2, SO2, PM10 increases by 10ug/m3,the number of outpatient visits of internal medicine will increase by 7.4%, 2.0%, 1.1% respectively in Tangshan; if NO2, SO2 increases by 10ug/m3, the number of emergency visits of internal medicine will increase by 5.8%, 1.0% respectively in Tangshan.(3)Mortality effect on respiratory diseases is commonly higher than that on cardiovascular diseases.If pollutants increased by 10ug/m3, mortality rate of respiratory diseases will increase by 0.5%~4.1%, and mortality rate of cardiovascular diseases will increase by 0.2%~1.6%.(4)Lag effect and accumulation effect have different influence on health endpoints. The study shows that the health effect on mortality of respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and outpatients of internal medicine almost show lag effect; the health effect on emergency visits of internal medicine nearly reflects accumulation effect.(5)The economic loss of human health caused by air pollution is of great importance. The mortality economic loss of respiratory diseases and cardiovascular diseases caused by air pollution are 25.5 and 36.9 million yuan with revise human capital method; the economic loss of outpatient and emergency visits are 0.52 and 5.61 million yuan with illness costs method.