The price of pollution

We definitely live in a society of cheap conveniences. Our store shelves are packed with an enormous variety of products. Today’s dollar stores are probably the best example of how flooded the market is with cheap goods. Big box retailers are popping up everywhere in order to make cheap goods available to everyone. But, are we really saving money when we buy cheap products?

Consider just two of the ways we end up paying:

1. Disease and disabilities linked to toxic chemicals in products and pollution from manufacturing become our personal health care costs, our personal loss of work, our personal stress and trauma.
2. The nation’s worst toxic waste sites, known as Superfund sites, are the remains of toxic industrial processes and often contaminate local drinking water sources and soil. Polluting industries used to pay a sizable tax to ensure that these sites were properly cleaned up. Now, tax-payers shoulder the burden.

“Pollution costs Minnesota an estimated $1.5 billion each year in costs related to childhood diseases including asthma, cancer, lead poisoning, birth defects and neurobehavioral disorders.” Read the full report The Price of Pollution: Cost Estimates of Environmental Related Childhood Diseases in Minnesota (PDF)

Additional Resources:

Priceless Benefits, Costly Mistakes – Frank Ackerman

Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing – Frank Ackerman & Lisa Heinzerling - As clinical as it sounds to express the value of human lives, health, or the environment in cold dollars and cents, cost-benefit analysis requires it. More disturbingly, this approach is being embraced by a growing number of politicians and conservative pundits as the most reasonable way to make many policy decisions regarding public health and the environment. Ackerman and Heinzerling argue that decisions about health and safety should be made “to reflect not economists’ numbers, but democratic values, chosen on moral grounds. This is a vividly written book, punctuated by striking analogies, a good deal of outrage, and a nice dose of humor” (Cass Sunstein, The New Republic).

The Economic Costs of Environmental Diseases and Disabilities – Kate Davies

Environmental pollutants and disease in American children: estimates of morbidity, mortality, and costs for lead poisoning, asthma, cancer, and developmental disabilities. Philip J Landrigan, Clyde B Schechter, Jeffrey M Lipton, Marianne C Fahs, and Joel Schwartz – Environmental Health Perspectives – July 2002