NEISA Research and Products
Illness Cost of Air Pollution
A recent report by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services suggested that direct health-related
costs from transported air pollution transported from out-of-state sources exceed $1 billion dollars in NH alone
(NH Dept. of Environmental Services).
This figure does not include the economic costs of reduced productivity or increased health claims
and health risks due to air pollution events.
Regional stakeholders have consistently identified the need to incorporate an economic analysis into our integrated
analysis. To this end, we identified the Illness Cost of Air Pollution (ICAP) model developed for the Ontario
Medical Association as the best existing method. We then determined that the most efficient way to incorporate
this approach into our model was to hire Ed Hanna from DSS Consultants (Toronto, Ontario) to modify the
Ontario Medical Association's "Illness Cost of Air Pollution" model
so that it can be used to determined
the health and productivity related costs of air pollution events by county in Maine and New Hampshire. The
model will also be used to investigate interannual variability in the illness cost of air pollution and thereby
incorporate a fundamental policy variable into our integrated data base. This was a collaborative effort between
NEISA and the American Lung Association of Maine. We expect this model to be up and running by the summer of 2005
and plan to contract DSS consultants again this autumn to expand the model to include Vermont and Massachusetts.
During the summer of 2004 we used two Internet-based surveys to examine the relationship between poor air quality
and worker health and productivity (Gittell et al., 2005). We propose to continue these surveys for the next five
years as well to provide a measure of the effectiveness of our outreach efforts with hospitals and businesses
around air quality, health, and worker productivity.
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