A Study on a Health Impact Assessment and Healthcare Cost Calculation of Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Residents under PM2.5 and O3 Pollution

Abstract

Excessive fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone (O3) are invisible killers affecting our wellbeing and safety, which cause great harm to people’s health, cause serious healthcare and economic losses, and affect the sustainable development of the social economy. The effective evaluation of the impact of pollutants on the human body, the associated costs, and the reduction of regional compound air pollution is an important research direction. Taking Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) as the research area, this study constructs a comprehensive model for measuring the healthcare costs of PM2.5 and O3 using the Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program (BenMAP) as its basis. First, this study establishes a health impact assessment model and calculates the number of people affected by PM2.5 and O3 exposure using the health impact function in the BTH region. Then, the willingness to pay (WTP) and cost of illness (COI) methods are used to estimate the healthcare costs inflicted by the two pollutants upon residents from 2018 to 2021. The calculation results show that the total healthcare costs caused by PM2.5 and O3 pollution in BTH accounted for 1%, 0.7%, 0.5%, and 0.3% of the regional GDP in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, respectively. Based on the research results, to further reduce these high healthcare costs, we propose policy suggestions for PM2.5 and O3 control in the BTH region.