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Report n°4: How Much to Spend for the Protection of Health and Environment

Guidelines

Even if the abatement costs are not known, the damage costs of Fig.5 indicate upper bounds for the permissible abatement cost. For example the abatement cost per kg of dioxins should not be higher than the damage cost, 185,000,000 €/kg.

One of the abatement options is the removal of Pb in drinking water. Since the damage cost for Pb in Fig.5 is for atmospheric emissions, a separate calculation is needed for water. The slope of the DRF (it is linear without threshold) is

sDR= 3.30E+03 IQ points/(kgabsorbed) . 

(2)

 

It is expressed in terms of the total population (even though only the exposure during the initial year or years of life matters, the adult brain being sufficiently stable not to suffer noticeable damage at low doses; the DRF of Eq.2 includes therefore the % of lifetime exposure during which the brain is affected). For the consumption of drinking water, risk assessments typically assume 600 L/yr per person, although in Europe a significant fraction of this is bottled water rather and not relevant for residential water supply systems. Also, the consumption rate for infants is much lower, about 200 L/yr according to EPA; that is the value I take here to estimate the benefits of reducing the Pb content of drinking water. In previous years the EU regulatory limit was 50 µg/L, currently it is 25 µg/L, and in a few years it will be lowered to 10 µg/L. For comparison in the USA the limit has been 15 µg/L since 1997. Multiplying the consumption by the concentration and the DRF of Eq.2, one finds the results in Table 8.

In many parts of the world As in drinking water is a serious health problem [Mushtaque & Chowdhury 2004]. For ingestion of As the DRF slope is

sDR= 1.07E+00 cancers/kgabsorbed.

(3)

 

Here I take the adult water consumption rate of 600 L/yr to obtain the results in Table 9. This counts only cancers. The cost may well be higher if the DRF for other health endpoints of arsenic is also significant at low doses.