Estimating health damage cost from secondary sulfate particles – a case study of Hunan Province, China

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Hao, Ji-ming | Li, Ji | Ye, Xue-mei | Zhu, Tian-le

Affiliations: Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Abstract: China's coal-dominated energy pattern has resulted in large amount of SO_{2} emissions. Estimate of the sulfur-related health damage cost is necessary to help perform systematic cost-benefit analysis and set national energy and emissions control priorities. Current researches were confined to gaseous SO_{2} in urban areas; however, secondary sulfate (SO_{4}^{2-}) particles can exert serious impact in a wider region. Based on the concept of "intake fraction", CALPUFF long-range dispersion model and 180 sample emission sources, multiple regression equation was obtained with good correlation (r=0.85), which illustrates that populations were key parameters to determine intake fraction but source characteristics were insignificant. Based on the formula and the population distribution data, county-level intake fractions were mapped for Hunan Province (range: 1.1×10^{−6}−3.2×10^{−6}) of China. A combination of county-level SO_{2} emissions with the intake fractions yields a total 1.98 tons of sulfate (SO_{4}^{2-}) inhalation, and resulting total health damage cost to be 0.76 (willingness to pay approach) or 0.16 (human capital approach) billion USD in 1997, about 2.1% or 0.45% of GDP in Hunan in 1997. Average health damage cost per ton of SO_{2} emission is 930 (willingness to pay approach) or 200 USD (human capital approach). The results demonstrated that more stringent regulation should be forced.

Keywords: intake fraction, health impact, Hunan Province, sulfate, regression analysis

Journal: Journal of Environmental Sciences, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 611-617, 2003