Welfare cost of pollution control

A model of joint-production of a conventional output and of pollutants is presented, within which continuous substitution between polluting fuels and nonpolluting inputs on the one hand and pollution control inputs on the other is allowed for. Using the steel industry as a case study, the welfare cost under an efficient policy to reduce particulate emissions is evaluated and compared with that under alternative inefficient policies. The results suggest that substantial cost savings can be made by following the “optimal” policy.     

The employment and earnings impacts of the regulation of stationary source air pollution

A model which analyzes the impacts of stationary source air pollution control regulations on the level and distribution of employment and earnings is presented. The model is an interindustry production model with endogenous price and wage determination. Consumer demand responses of households are determined by applying elasticity estimates to price and earnings changes. The model is applied to analyze the restrictions on levels of permissible emissions from stationary sources set by the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments. The significant results found are (1) the policy has a dampening effect on the economy and (2) the expenditure, earnings, and disposable earning impacts are uniformly regressive.     

北京市空气污染季节变化规律研究及污染控制建议

北京市的空气质量问题直接关系到首都的经济发展和生态环境建设,也影响着北京在世界大都市的地位.近几年,中央政府和北京市对首都空气质量的改善也越来越重视.根据北京市环保局下设的27个测站点从2005年末到2008年初的观测资料,借助SPSS统计软件,通过对北京市各区域不同时间段的空气污染指数进行对比分析和研究,旨在探索北京市空气污染的季节性变化规律及其污染控制埘策.研究结果表明:北京的首要污染物为可吸入颗粒物;在一年当中,6-8月份的气象条件有利于大气污染物的稀释和扩散,大气环境质量相对最好:冬季受气象条件和采暖的影响.春季季风段受西北部沙尘暴的影响,大气环境质量相对较差.根据这个规律,为确保北京市中长期大气环境保护工作目标的实现,进一步降低污染排放、改善城市空气质量提出了具体的对策和建议.     

On estimating air pollution control benefits from land value studies

This paper deals with some unresolved issues in interpreting empirical property value/air pollution studies. A model is developed in which it is shown that in general regressions of property values on pollution variables do not identify the demand curve for clean air. However since the first derivative of the observed rent function is a locus of household equilibrium marginal willingnesses to pay, aggregate benefits can be calculated directly. The possibilities for obtaining approximate measures of aggregate benefits for nonmarginal changes in air quality are also discussed.     

Distributional analysis of regional benefits and cost of air quality control

The methodology and results of an analysis of benefits and costs of air quality control for an urban region in Florida are given. The machinery used considers the spatial distribution of (a) emission sources, (b) the ambient levels resulting from local meteorological conditions and geographic features, and (c) the socioeconomic characteristics of the impacted population groups. This facilitates an examination of the distributional aspects of costs and benefits associated with various control scenarios. With appropriate adaptation and inputs the steps in our analysis should apply to a distributional benefit/cost analyses for any region.     

Averting expenditure and the cost of pollution

The paper considers the relationship between the willingness to pay for environmental quality and averting expenditures—that is, the costs of measures undertaken in efforts to counteract the consequences of pollution. The models used assume perfect mobility among locations with different levels of environmental quality. The major results are: (1) Averting expenditures are not in general a good measure of willingness to pay; (2) averting expenditures are not always even a lower bound on willingness to pay; (3) even when averting expenditures are a lower bound, the difference between the level of such expenditures and willingness to pay cannot be attributed to the unavertible “aesthetic” consequences of pollution.     

Intercontinental transport of air pollution

There is an increasing interest on the intercontinental transport of air pollution among the three main emission regions at northern mid-latitudes: North America, Europe, and East Asia. Air pollutants with sufficient long lifetime can be transported from one continent to another. Observations from ground sites, aircraft and satellites have demonstrated this intercontinental-scale transport of air pollutants in the free troposphere. Numerical models have been applied to understand the pathways of the transport and the impact of intercontinental pollution transport. This paper reviews current observational evidence and modeling studies of intercontinental transport of ozone and its precursors, and the resulting impacts on air quality.     

Catalytic TiO2 oxidation of ethanethiol for environmentally begnin air pollution control of sulphur compounds

Volatile organic compounds containing reduced sulphur such as thiols and thioethers are released mostly from biological activities and a number of manufacturing processes, such as papermaking and petroleum refining. Environmentally benign and cost-effective air pollution control technology for reduced sulphur compounds is still a topic of research, e.g., in pulp and paper industry. Due to its advantages, photocatalytic oxidation over titanium dioxide presents a potential alternative for the air treatment strategies. The temperature influence on the reaction pathway and kinetics of gas-phase photocatalytic oxidation and thermal catalytic decomposition of ethanethiol over Degussa P25 TiO₂ was established by a continuous flow method in a simple tubular reactor at temperatures from 373 to 453 K. Kinetic parameters for ethanethiol were: adsorption enthalpy −45 kJ mol⁻¹ and activation energy 42 kJ mol⁻¹. Sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, acetic acid and water were identified as by-products.     

The economics of enforcing air pollution controls

The goal of this paper is to determine the likely effect on a firm's control actions of alternative implementation and enforcement policies available to the control agency. Three alternatives are studied, legal enforcement through the new source performance standards set forth by EPA, and two effluent fee enforcement alternatives. First, a generalized model of the effects of implementation and enforcement policies on the firm's control action is developed. This model assumes that the firm is an expected cost minimizer. The model is then applied to the case of particulate matter discharges from coal-fired power plants in order to estimate empirically the effect of policy alternatives on the firm's control efforts. Finally, the results of the model and its empirical application are used to develop policy functions which relate control to the values of various policy parameters. These results lead us to several policy recommendations.     

Extreme value analysis of Munich air pollution data

We present three different approaches to modelling extreme values of daily air pollution data. We fitted a generalized extreme value distribution to the monthly maxima of daily concentration measures. For the exceedances of a high threshold depending on the data, the parameters of the generalized Pareto distribution were estimated. Accounting for autocorrelation, clusters of exceedances were used. To obtain information about the relationship of the exceedance of the air quality standard and possible predictors we applied logistic regression. Results and their interpretation are given for daily average concentrations of ozone and nitrogen dioxide at two monitoring sites within the city of Munich.     

An empirical analysis of air pollution dose-response curves

The authors combine information from 2 million death certificates and 2 million observations from the Public Use Sample. With several strategies for controlling extraneous variation, the authors explore these data in order to measure the chronic effects of several air pollutants on white mortality rates. In the United States, approximately 140,000 deaths a year (Wo of all deaths) may be associated with air pollution. The size of this effect increases dramatically with age, with children displaying no detectable associations. Some pollutants, especially sulfate, are closely associated with many deaths, whereas other pollutants, especially ozone and nitrogen dioxide, have no apparent effect on expected lifetimes.     

Unemployment and the backward incidence of pollution control

This paper reexamines the backward incidence of pollution control using duality theory for a two-sector general equilibrium model in which the economy experiences large-scale unemployment and perfect capital mobility with a sector-specific rigid wage in the polluting sector. In this context it is shown that with stricter pollution controls the wage rate in the nonpolluting sector rises while the common rental rate falls. In addition, stricter pollution controls are shown to have an uncertain impact on national income.     

Uncertainty and the choice of pollution control instruments

This paper compares the relative efficiencies of pollution taxes, pollution standards, and the auctioning of pollution rights when the marginal damage function or marginal control cost are subject to uncertainty. In the first case, we find that all instruments yield the same expected social surplus. In the latter case, the choice of the optimal instrument depends, in general, on the relative elasticities of the marginal damage and marginal expected cost functions, on the way in which uncertainty enters the model, and on the distribution of the error term. Policy conclusions are derived.     

Biochemical parameters of plants as indicators of air pollution

In the present study species like Mangifera indica, Linn., Cassia fistula, Linn., and Eucalyptus hybrid were exposed to different air pollution load for short duration (active biomonitoring). Variation in biochemical parameters like chlorophyll, protein, soluble sugar free amino acid, ascorbic acid, nitrate reductase, superoxide dismutase and peroxidase in the leaves were found to be pollution load dependent. These variations can be used as indicators of air pollution for early diagnosis of stress or as a marker for physiological damage to trees prior to the onset of visible injury symptoms. Just by analyzing these biochemical indicators air quality can also be assessed.     

Efficient air pollution abatement for regions in China

This paper computes the efficient air pollution abatement ratios of 30 regions in China during the period 1996–2002. Three air emissions (SO₂, soot and dust) are considered. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) with a single output (real GDP) and five inputs (labour, real capital stock, SO₂, dust and soot emissions) is used to compute the target emissions of each region for each year. The efficient abatement ratios of each region in each year are then obtained by dividing the target emission by the actual emission of an air pollutant. Our major findings are: 1. The eastern area is the most efficient region with respect to SO₂, soot and dust emissions in every year during the research period. 2. The eastern, central and western areas have the lowest, medium and highest 1996–2002 average target abatement ratios of SO₂ (22.09%, 42.23% and 57.58%), soot (26.19%, 56.34% and 66.37%) and dust (15.20%, 29.09% and 40.59%), respectively. 3. These results are consistent with the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) theory, whereby a more developed area will use environmental goods more efficiently than a less developed area. 4. Compared to dust emission, the average target abatement ratios for SO₂ and soot emissions (as direct outcomes of burning coal) are relatively much higher for all three areas.     

Spatial economic theory of pollution control

In February 1972 the Nixon Administration proposed a tax on sulfur oxide emissions, beyond the Federal standards, of electric power plants. It was hoped that such a tax would discourage power plant locations in heavily polluted areas like urban areas. Assuming that such a tax varies over space because pollution is not invariant over space, the spatial theory of the firm is presented in this paper cast doubt on the efficacy of such a polltuion tax to achieve the desired goal of the administration. In particular it is shown that the cost-minimizing spatial firm would abate its pollution in response to a tax by either changing its location or by reducing waste through process change or by using a transportable abatement good if the tax savings due to the change in marginal abatement through location change per unit change in abatement is greater than or equal to transport rate on the abatement good. If the goal of the firm is to maximize profits, the desired outcome would follow if in addition to the fulfillment of the above condition the percentage change in the delivered price of raw material (situated at one end of the linear location space) per unit distance is greater than or equal to the percentage change in net marginal revenue, i.e., marginal revenue net of transport cost per unit of output. In simple terms, the conclusions of this paper raise doubts regarding the effectiveness of a pollution tax in curtailing pollution of a firm which is operating in a space economy. This outcome is peculiar to a spatial firm. Sufficient conditions also have been obtained when land input is included in the production function of the firm.     

Spatio-temporal analysis of air pollution in North China Plain

Environmental and Ecological Statistics - Accompanying China’s rapid industrialization, a vast area of the country, particularly the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region, has...     

The optimality and feasibility of uniform air pollution controls

An optimal control problem is developed which minimizes both the social damages of pollution concentrations and the private costs of emission abatement subject to a differential equation relating emissions and concentrations. A specific use of the model is to analyze the optimality and feasibility of uniform controls on emissions and concentrations across an air shed.