Health benefit modeling using BenMAP for air pollution impact measurements in Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Abstract

Recently, Malaysia were experiencing a continuous and transboundary air pollution in cities with increasing economic growth and rapid developments. This resulted in an increasing level PM10 which further led to increase in the respiratory-related health cases. Thus, the exposed population may experience respiratory health effects, lose of working days and increase in medical spending to cure the health effects. This study focused on quantifying health and economic benefits from the PM10 reduction level by applying BenMAP, which is a software measuring the impact of air pollution. Health impact function (HIF) are used to relate between the change of PM10 level and the change in incidence rates of the PM10-related health effects among the exposed population. The HIF was developed based on two Relative Risk (RR) estimates adapted from HKL and HUKM in a similar study in Klang Valley. A 30 percent reduction scenario was implemented in order to exemplify greater health benefits for PM10 level that will be much lower than the current DOE guideline of PM10. From the analysis, the highest PM10 level recorded was 46.88 µg/m3 for the baseline scenario and 32.82 µg/m3 after the reduction scenario. The second stage analysis for HKL RR estimates resulted in incidence rate of 134.74 during the baseline scenario and 58.69 after reduction scenario. For HUKM’s RR estimate, the analysis yielded an incidence rate of 446.45 before the reduction scenario and 202.21 after reduction scenario. The last stage of analysis produced monetized benefits for Johor Bahru by applying Cost of Illness (COI) method. This generated a COI of RM 1,054,000 and RM3,497,000 for HKL and HUKM respectively during the baseline scenario. The COI are reduced to RM459,000 and RM1,584,000 after the reduction scenario for HKL and HUKM respectively. This research further proves that the public health burden could be reduced up to RM1,900,000 if PM10 reduction scenario is applied in Johor Bahru. Policymakers and planners can apply BenMAP in order to check the existing policies and strategies for controlling air pollution and PM10 emission level in Johor Bahru as well as a benchmark to develop a new guideline for PM2.5.