Imagine trying to put a price tag on how much a dirty river or smoggy air actually costs a city in medical bills and lost work. This work creates a precise calculator that links pollution levels to specific illnesses like heart disease or cancer. It helps governments understand the real financial burden of environmental damage so they can make better spending decisions.
Public authorities lack a consistent, rigorous method to calculate the actual financial cost of chronic diseases caused by air and water pollution. This leads to inaccurate socio-economic analyses and poor policy decisions regarding environmental stressors.
A set of exposure-response functions, high-resolution exposure models for air and water, and a system of unit prices for health cost accounting.
If you are a sustainability consultancy dealing with imprecise environmental impact reports — this project developed unit prices and accounting guidelines that provide a rigorous way to calculate the welfare economic health costs of pollution.
If you are a fertilizer manufacturer dealing with regulatory pressure over nitrate leaching — this project developed exposure modeling that captures how ammonia evaporation and nitrates lead to secondary air particles and water contamination.
If you are a health insurance provider dealing with rising chronic disease claims — this project developed exposure-response functions that link air pollution to depression and inflammatory bowel disease.
Based on available project data, the project uses exposure-response functions and economic valuation surveys to derive unit prices for an accounting approach to health costs.
The project is designed for use by public authorities in 6 different countries (CZ, DK, EE, ES, SE, XK) to underpin regular socio-economic analysis.
Based on available project data, the project provides guidelines and unit prices for accounting; specific licensing terms for the modeling tools are not mentioned.
It addresses the economic accounting of air pollution and drinking water nitrate levels, which are critical for EU and national authority policy scenarios.
The project period runs from 2023-01-01 to 2026-12-31.
The consortium is research-heavy with 11 partners across 7 countries, featuring 4 universities and 3 research organizations. With an industry ratio of 18% (2 industrial partners, 1 of which is an SME), the project is primarily focused on methodological development rather than immediate commercial productization, though the inclusion of industry ensures the resulting accounting guidelines remain practical for real-world application.
Contact Aarhus Universitet (DK) regarding the MARCHES project
Contact us to get the latest unit price guidelines for environmental health accounting.
