Abstract
Coal-fired power plants are one of the major sources of coal consumption in China; they discharge various air pollutants and cause serious human health damage. There is an urgent need to focus on the associated health effects. Thus, this study aims to advance an integrated life cycle assessment (LCA)–based health damage model to quantify the health burden of air pollutant emissions from coal-fired power generation (CFPG) and to achieve an economic interpretation of health damage. A case study of the Zaozhuang coal-fired power project was conducted to better visualize and mitigate the impacts. The results reveal that willingness to pay (WTP) for health damage caused by the CFPG project in 1 year amounted to USD 15.71 million, and the total amount of life lost was 155.81 years. During the CFPG process, coal combustion caused the most health damage, respiratory disease was the type of damage with the greatest influence on health, and SO2 was the air pollutant that causes the most serious health damage. The model developed in this study can be broadly applied to assess the potential life loss due to air pollutant emissions from CFPG systems. The identified key points for health damage prevention can also be used as practical solutions for decision-making regarding the prioritization of control sources for environmental management.
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Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- CFPG:
-
Coal-fired power generation
- LCA:
-
Life cycle assessment
- CH4 :
-
Methane
- CO:
-
Carbon monoxide
- CO2 :
-
Carbon dioxide
- SO2 :
-
Sulfur dioxide
- NOx :
-
Nitrogen oxides
- COPD:
-
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- ARIs:
-
Acute respiratory infections
- CCVD:
-
Cardiocerebrovascular diseases
- Ci :
-
Added concentrations of air pollutant “i” (μg/m3)
- Mi :
-
Annual total mass of air pollutant “i” in all life cycle stages (μg)
- Eij :
-
Added cases of health damage “j” caused by air pollutant “i” increase per unit concentration (cases/(μg·m−3·a))
- N:
-
Total population within the area of influence of the pollutant
- URij :
-
Effect factor of health damage “j” caused by air pollutant “i” (cases/(μg·m−3))
- Lt :
-
Average lifetime of people in the area affected by pollutants (a)
- Tij :
-
Annual added number of patients with health damage “j” caused by air pollutant “i” (cases/a)
- DALYj :
-
Disability adjusted life years of unit disease case “j” (a/case)
- YLLj :
-
Years of life lost of unit disease case “j” (a/case)
- YLDj :
-
Years of life with disability of unit disease case “j” (a/case)
- Lj :
-
Duration of disease case “j” (a)
- Dj :
-
Disability weight of disease case “j”
- Uij :
-
Added number of DALY of worker with health damage “j” caused by annual emissions of air pollutant “i” (a)
- VSLtarget :
-
The value of a statistical life for the target country
- VSLbase :
-
The base VSL for the reference country
- GNI per capitatarget :
-
The gross national income per capita for the target country
- GNI per capitatarget :
-
The gross national income per capita for the reference country
- Fi :
-
Fate factor (m−3)
- elasticity:
-
The income elasticity factor
- VLY:
-
Annual life value of workers (USD)
- n:
-
Expected remaining life (a)
- r:
-
Effective discount rate, 4%
- WTP:
-
Willingness to pay (USD
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52074302) and the Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality (No. 8212015).
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Ruipeng Tong: Writing-review and editing, project administration, and funding acquisition.
Yiran Wang: Conceptualization, writing-original draft, and investigation.
Xu Zhao: Methodology, formal analysis, and software.
Xiaoyi Yang: Resources, data analysis, and visualization.
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Tong, R., Wang, Y., Zhao, X. et al. Modeling health impacts of air pollutant emissions from the coal-fired power industry based on LCA and oriented by WTP: a case study. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 34486–34499 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-18561-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-18561-z