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![]() 271952 Accounting for Costs: Climate Change-Related Health Costs in the USWednesday, October 31, 2012
: 11:30 AM - 11:50 AM
Estimates of climate change's potential costs to society typically neglect health-related costs, which underestimates climate change's true costs. This talk describes the valuation methodology developed and applied by a team of health scientists and economists in 2011 to arrive at health cost estimates from six climate change-related case studies. The six include extreme weather, disease or pollution events representative of types projected to worsen with climate change: ozone air pollution, heat waves, hurricanes, outbreaks of infectious disease, river flooding, and wildfires. This is the first study to develop a uniform method of quantifying the associated health costs for events of types projected to be exacerbated by climate change. Health costs exceeding $14 billion dollars and over 760,000 interactions with the health care system are estimated from 2002-2009, for just these six case studies. This talk proposes how to begin to weave together an even fuller cost accounting of climate change's effects on health. Estimating the health effects of climate change-related events and the associated costs in dollars, can inform progress toward more health-protective energy and preparedness policies. These policies could offer substantial benefits, in terms of avoided health costs and in building healthier, more secure communities.
Learning Objectives: Keywords: Climate Change, Economic Analysis
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am Senior Scientist at NRDC where I study the ways that climate change affects human health, and Assistant Clinical Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Mailman SPH at Columbia University, where I teach on the topic. I have published on a range of those impacts. Recently, I was co-author of a study describing substantial, yet previously unestimated, health-related costs of climate change in the US. I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.
Back to: 5120.0: Environmental health policies, human health costs
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