Air Pollution Health Effects: Toward an Integrated Assessment

Abstract

The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change is an organization for research, independent policy analysis, and public education in global environmental change. It seeks to provide leadership in understanding scientific, economic, and ecological aspects of this difficult issue, and combining them into policy assessments that serve the needs of ongoing national and international discussions. To this end, the Program brings together an interdisciplinary group from two established research centers at MIT: the Center for Global Change Science (CGCS) and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR). These two centers bridge many key areas of the needed intellectual work, and additional essential areas are covered by other MIT departments, by collaboration with the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biology Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole, and by short-and long-term visitors to the Program. The Program involves sponsorship and active participation by industry, government, and non-profit organizations.To inform processes of policy development and implementation, climate change research needs to focus on improving the prediction of those variables that are most relevant to economic, social, and environmental effects. In turn, the greenhouse gas and atmospheric aerosol assumptions underlying climate analysis need to be related to the economic, technological, and political forces that drive emissions, and to the results of international agreements and mitigation. Further, assessments of possible societal and ecosystem impacts, and analysis of mitigation strategies, need to be based on realistic evaluation of the uncertainties of climate science.This report is one of a series intended to communicate research results and improve public understanding of climate issues, thereby contributing to informed debate about the climate issue, the uncertainties, and the economic and social implications of policy alternatives. Titles in the Report Series to date are listed on the inside back cover.

Valuing climate impacts in integrated assessment models: the MIT IGSM

“…Epidemiological relationships have been estimated for many pollutants, as they relate to a variety of health impacts from restricted activity days, cases of asthma for different age groups, and susceptibility to premature death from acute and chronic exposure to pollutants (Yang et al, 2005;Matus et al, 2008;Nam et al, 2010;and Matus et al, 2012). Here we focus on a forwardlooking study on potential effects of ozone on human health, where we are able to separate the effects of increasing emissions of ozone precursors from the effects on climate on the chemistry of ozone formation (Selin et al, 2009).…”