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

Results for Cost per kg of Pollutant

The impacts quantified by ExternE so far are global warming, health, damage to buildings and materials, and loss of agricultural production. Apart from global warming due to CO2, CH4 and N2O, more than 95% of the costs is due to health impacts, especially mortality. Morbidity (especially chronic bronchitis, but also asthma, hospital admissions etc) account for almost 30% of the damage cost of PM, NOx and SO2. The impacts evaluated and the key assumptions are listed in Table 3. The resulting damage costs in €/kg of pollutant are shown in Fig.5 for typical sources with stack heights above 50 m in Central Europe. As for variation with site and stack height, the following rules can be recommended for modifying factors:

  • no variation for globally dispersing pollutants such as CO2;
  • weak variation for As, Pb and dioxins because non-inhalation pathways dominate: ≈0.7 to 1.5 for site (higher cost for higher regional population density), no variation with stack height;
  • weak variation for secondary pollutants: ≈0.5 to 2.0 for site (higher cost for higher regional population density), no variation with stack height;
  • strong variation for primary pollutants: ≈0.5 to 5 for site (higher cost for higher local population density), ≈0.6 to 3 for stack conditions (up to 15 for ground level emissions in big city).

Of course, such rules can only yield rough estimates; site-specific calculations should be carried out when more precise results are needed.