Valuation of health impact due to industry induced environmental pollution

Abstract

Industrialization is inevitable for economic advancement of any country. In this process, country gradually shifts from small non-polluting to heavy polluting industrial structures. While the economies brought by the industries are always admired and persuade the nation for establishing more such structures; diseconomies caused by pollution generated by the industries are often ignored. This is because the costs that incurred by industrial pollution are mostly socio-environmental costs. Only way to bring these costs into attention of people is to quantify. This study intends to identify the health impacts caused by industrial pollutions to the adjacent population and quantify them. Shyampur is selected as study area for this research. This area falls within Demra thana of DMDP area. In this research samples are taken from two groups of population from the study area, one residing within 0.5 km from major industrial belt along Dhaka-Narayanganj highway (the experimental group) and another residing within 0.5 to 1 km from the same industrial belt (the control group). The hypothesis is people living at distance from concentrated industrial area will report less impacts of pollution on their health. Outputs from general health information collected by household questionnaire and weekly diary maintained for 12 weeks are analyzed. The health impacts varied from increased frequencies of pollution induced diseases to incidents of serious diseases like cancer or heart diseases. The study finds higher rates of pollution induced diseases like asthma and dermatitis for experimental group (22%-43%) than control group (15%-32%). Vulnerable age groups like new born and most elderly people from experimental group also seem to report about these diseases at higher rate compared to the control group. Prevalence of diseases in overall study area varies significantly with national average. In addition, quantified health impacts such as the cost of illness estimated from the research is almost double for the study area compared to national average. In spite of underreporting about disease mitigation expense, around one third of the total cost of illness (3,29,745 BDT) calculated for the study area is spent behind only three diseases (asthma, TB and dermatitis) which are likely to be caused by pollution. So, the study deduces the industries existing within the area might have a major impact on the adjacent population. Finally, researcher would like to suggest adaptation of technologies and enforcement of laws for industrial developments to keep pollution and effects of pollution under control. A comprehensive and sustainable industrial development for the country can be attained through infrastructural upgradation and awareness building. It is also suggested that instead of focusing on short term economic gains by industrialization, priority should be placed on long term affects on people’s health by ensuring of sustainable industrial advancement.