Economic Impact of Pollution on Health Essay

Environmental degradation has indirect relationship with economic bodily process of households by affecting their health. Diseases borne by environmental befoulment result in loss of income, loss of working hours, low labor productivity and heavy consumption on health by households. This research assessed the economic impact of environmental befoulment on human health. It was a micro level study conducted in the district of Rawalpindi. For this purpose, primary data was collected through interview schedule by using simple random technique. The extent of relationship between pollution borne diseases and income loss, expenditure on health and working hours was estimated through ANCOVA regression model using mixture of quantitative and qualitative variables.Results revealed the fact that there is both water and air pollution in Rawalpindi. Pure drinking water is seldom available. People are widely suffering from pollution borne diseases. Due to incidence of pollution borne diseases like malaria, hepatitis and asthma households expenditure increases significantly. Of three diseases malaria is less dangerous according to economic point of view, because its treatment takes fewer resources out of good expenditure, while asthma and hepatitis occupies a large share of household expenditure. Income of households did not show significant response towards diseases, this result is justified by the logic, as when any member of family gets ill, other members or he/she himself try to earn more to meet health expenditure.On the other hand, outbreaks of such diseases in a country transmit a great shock to GDP of that country, because Govt. has to allocate certain handsome amount of budget to deal with such sombre health issues. Similarly, it was observed that working hours of labor are seriously affected by the incidence of such diseases. Moreover, an affected persons productivity besides differs significantly from those who are healthy. Pollution is a negative characteri stic of environment which causes degradation and affects the activities of individuals living in the environment. It is suggested that there must be some conk out policy to defend the environment of Rawalpindi, so that quality of life can be better off for citizens. Clean environment is the pre-requisite for the citizens to play some shaping role in nations development.