Global Health and Economic Impacts of Future Ozone Pollution
Name
MITJPSPGC_Rpt177.pdf
Size
1.04 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
a2014c3ddd5bacff0be40bdf671cb401
Author(s)
Webster, Mort D.
Prinn, Ronald G.
Paltsev, Sergey
Reilly, John M.
Nam, Kyung-Min
Wu, Shiliang
Selin, Noelle E.
Date Issued
August 2009
Publisher
MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Citation
Report no. 177
Series/Report no.
;Report no. 177
Abstract
We assess the human health and economic impacts of projected 2000-2050 changes in ozone pollution using the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis-Health Effects (EPPA-HE) model, in combination with results from the GEOS-Chem global tropospheric chemistry model that simulated climate and chemistry effects of IPCC SRES emissions. We use EPPA to assess the human health damages (including acute mortality and morbidity outcomes) caused by ozone pollution and quantify their economic impacts in sixteen world regions. We compare the costs of ozone pollution under scenarios with 2000 and 2050 ozone precursor and greenhouse gas emissions (SRES A1B scenario). We estimate that health costs due to global ozone pollution above pre-industrial levels by 2050 will be $580 billion (year 2000$) and that acute mortalities will exceed 2 million. We find that previous methodologies underestimate costs of air pollution by more than a third because they do not take into account the long-term, compounding effects of health costs. The economic effects of emissions changes far exceed the influence of climate alone.
Description
Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/).
