出版社：Suntory Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines
摘要：We examine the relationship between common sources of airborne pollution and
population mortality in present day England. The current air quality limit
values are low by both historical and international standards, and these are set
at levels which are believed not to be harmful to health. We assess whether this
view is correct. We use data at local authority level for the period 1998 to
2004 to examine whether current levels of airborne pollution, as measured by
annual mean concentrations of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate
matter less than 10 μm in diameter (PM10) and ozone, are associated with excess
deaths. We examine all cause mortality and deaths from specific cardiovascular
and respiratory causes that are known to be exacerbated by air pollution. We
exploit the panel nature of our data to control for any unobserved
time-invariant associations at local authority level between high levels of
pollution and poor population health and estimate multi-pollutant models to
allow for the fact that three of the pollutants are closely correlated. We find
higher levels of PM10 and ozone are associated with higher mortality rates. The
size of the effects we find translates into around 4,500 deaths per annum.
