Evaluation of Health Loss Caused by Haze Pollution in Beijing: Historical Changes and Current Situation
Abstract
Haze pollution’s harm to residents’ health has become a public topic arousing the national, social and public concerns. This paper, taking Beijing as an example, quantitatively evaluated the current situation and historical changes of health-related economic loss caused by haze pollution across Beijing’s districts, based on the data from 2009 to 2016 on air pollutant concentration, pathology and health statistics. The results show that health-related economic loss caused by haze pollution of Beijing in 2016 was about RMB 67.925 billion. The most severe health loss was seen in Chaoyang, Haidian and Fengtai districts, while less health loss was found in Yanqing, Mentougou and Huairou districts. This is mainly attributed to the differences in pollutants emission, local population and geographic location. Judging from the trend, the health loss caused by air pollution across Beijing saw a wavelike rise first, followed by a decrease year by year, from 2009 to 2016; but the loss in 2016 was at least 1.1 times that in 2009. The control over air pollution faces severe challenges. Therefore, it is urgently needed to address haze pollution in line with the local conditions of Beijing and take gradual steps to incorporate health loss caused by air pollution into the balance sheet accounting system of natural resources.
