Costs of attributable burden disease to PM2.5 ambient air pollution exposure in Medellín, Colombia, 2010–2016

Abstract

Introduction: The impact of PM2.5 ambient air pollution exposure on morbimortality has been documented; however, for Latin American cities, there are no calculations of the economic burden. The objective of the study was to estimate the costs of attributable burden disease to PM2.5 ambient air pollution exposure in Medellín, Colombia. Methods: The costs were assessed using the cost-of-illness approach and the human capital approach, which include direct medical costs and indirect costs due to loss of productivity. To estimate the value of the lost years of production the salaries established in the Great Integrated Household Survey carried out in September 2016 by the National Administrative Department of Statistics of Colombia were used. The PYWL were calculated taking as a reference the 57 years to age of death for female and 62 years for male. For both, an alternative scenario was proposed to account for the cost of working years by changing the reference age to 80 years. Results: A total of 5540 potential years of working life lost due to premature deaths attributed to exposure to PM2.5 was calculated. The costs of attributable morbimortality to PM2.5 exposure in Medellín totaled 86,0 million dollars in baseline scenario and 281,2 million dollars in alternative scenario. Which represented 0.091% of the gross domestic product of Colombia and 0.627% of that from the Department of Antioquia. The highest percentage of the costs associated with the loss of productivity originated in the premature death of the population over 50 years of age, both due to chronic and acute events. Discussion: The costs of mortality represented 80% of the total. PM2.5 ambient air pollution exposure generates significant costs associated with the loss of years of working life, due to acute infections and chronic diseases of respiratory tract and ischemic heart diseases