Research On Indirect Economic Loss Estimation Caused By Haze Pollution

With the rapid development of China, there are massive air pollutants emitted into atmosphere, which cause more haze days. This situation causes bad effects on the public health, production and life. The haze pollution also causes huge economic losses. So, analyzing the contributing factor, the health and economic impact of haze more detail is of great importance for urban air pollution prevention and control. It is also important to improve the air quality and people health.We used gray relative analysis method to study the effects of meteorological factors and human factors on the haze pollution in Beijing. From the perspective of human health, we used exposure-response functions to estimate the adverse health effects due to PM2.5 pollution. Then the corresponding labor loss and excess medical expenditure were computed as two conducting variables. Finally, this paper introduced the two conducting variables into the computable general equilibrium model to assess the impacts on sectors and the whole economic system caused by PM2.5 pollution. Then from the perspective of loss in transportation industry, we used the static input-output model to evaluate the indirect losses both in the transportation and the other departments due to heavy haze. The event of the heavy haze in Beijing in January 2013 was taken as an example. We screened the haze-sensitive sectors, analyzed the effects of each sectors, and then evaluated the indirect production loss caused by haze pollution.The paper got the following results by the study described above:(1) The effects of meteorological factors on the haze pollution in Beijing include average vapor pressure, average relative humidity and average air pressure and the effects of human factors include proportion of industry, SO2 emissions and afforestation coverage in the city. The haze pollution in Beijing is not only influenced by the climate conditions, but it is influenced by fire coal, automobile exhaust, industrial production and other aspects of social production and living.(2) Substantial health effects on the residents in Beijing from PM2.5 pollution were occurred in 2013, including 20043 premature deaths,22452 hospital admissions for respiratory and 11007 for cardiovascular diseases,140891 outpatient visits of pediatrics and 332120 of internal medicine,80962 cases of chronic bronchitis,374785 cases of acute bronchitis and 182419 of asthma, respectively. Correspondingly, Beijing GDP loss due to the health impact of PM2.5 pollution is estimated as 1286.97 million RMB. Haze not only has adverse health effects, but also brings huge economic losses.(3) The total indirect production loss from the impact of transportation industry caused by heavy haze was 210.04 million RMB. There are 5 haze-sensitive sectors: metal smelting and rolling processing industry, metal mining and dressing industry, transportation and warehousing industry, non-mental mineral product industry, nonmetal minerals and other minerals mining and dressing industry. In the long term, longer production recovery periods of the damaged departments will lead to greater indirect production losses.In the end, the paper summarized the study results, and presented the shortages and research prospects in this article.