The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a study that estimates the costs and benefits of the ground zero ozone standard revisions to set air pollution levels based on health effects, proposed by it earlier in the year. The report involves the nationwide benefits of decreased health care costs and detriments of increasing cost of pollution controls on power plants etc.
The benefits estimated by the EPA studies the health quality, public welfare and the air quality, and expect the result will be a net savings of $23 billion. Whereas, the public health enhancement and complicated air quality models are expected to result in a net loss of $20 billion.
$2.5 billion to $33 billion each year will be the cost of saving hundreds of lives from premature deaths due to exposure to ozone, while $3.9 billion per year (that includes $200 million for utilities and $730 million for transportation) is the cost for technology to control pollution.
The predicament is that EPA is perplexed over their estimation – will benefits prevail over costs or will the exuberant costs play mightier.
[Image Credit: Dep]
[Source: DailyGreen]
