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Impacts of air pollution on health: evidence from longitudinal cohort data of patients with cardiovascular diseases

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Abstract

This study uses longitudinal cohort data to estimate the impacts of air pollution on health outcomes among people first hospitalised with heart diseases. Despite the generally low level of pollution in Australia, we find that acute exposure to pollution increases readmissions to hospitals within 3–12 months after discharge and is more evident among those suffering from heart failure. We further show that chronic exposure to air pollution increases the risk of death within 72 months, hospital admissions and general practitioner (GP) visits. Patients with coronary heart disease or cerebrovascular disease are the most affected groups. Finally, a cost saving of $1.3 billion will be generated to the health sector, if the monthly concentration of PM10 and CO was lowered to 15.49 µg/m3 and 122.99 µg/m3, respectively. The findings from our study emphasize the need for policies that target significant reduction in ambient PM10 and CO to decrease the demand for scarce healthcare resources for cardiac diseases.

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Notes

  1. 3% of the Australian adult population was estimated to have CHD in 2017–2018.

  2. Confidence intervals of the mean costs were estimated a nonparametric bootstrapping approach with 1000 replications. All cost figures were reported using Australian Dollars, 2015 prices.

  3. About 70% of observations will be dropped from the analysis if we form monthly panel data and take the first lag.

  4. We have also controlled for the individual’s socioeconomic status in our models.

  5. We also estimated a separate analysis for Moranbah, but the results were not statistically significant because of the very small sample for Moranbah.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the two anonymous referees for their suggestions on improving the earlier version of the manuscript. This paper was presented at the Brown Bag Seminar Series at the Centre for Applied Finance and Economics (CAFÉ), University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia. We are grateful to the participants for their comments. This project benefitted financially from National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC): Program Grant number 1055214 and Centre for Research Excellence (CRE) Grant number 1044897.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Applied Health Economics, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, 4111, Australia

    Clifford Afoakwah, Son Nghiem, Paul Scuffham & Joshua Byrnes

  2. Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University, Nathan, Australia

    Paul Scuffham

  3. The Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Australia

    Quan Huynh & Tom Marwick

Authors
  1. Clifford Afoakwah
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  2. Son Nghiem
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  3. Paul Scuffham
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  4. Quan Huynh
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  6. Joshua Byrnes
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Correspondence to Clifford Afoakwah.

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Afoakwah, C., Nghiem, S., Scuffham, P. et al. Impacts of air pollution on health: evidence from longitudinal cohort data of patients with cardiovascular diseases. Eur J Health Econ 21, 1025–1038 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-020-01198-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-020-01198-5

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