Wednesday, April 2, 2008 : 8:00 a.m.
Economic Benefits of Arsenic Removal : Case Study from India
People living in almost fifty percent of the districts in West Bengal are exposed to arsenic contaminated water. This paper seeks to estimate the economic costs imposed by arsenic- related health problems. We use data from a primary survey of 473 households carried out in the districts of North 24 Parganas and Midnapore. We take into account household actions to either decrease the exposure of family members to unsafe water or to alleviate the health effects of consuming arsenic-contaminated water. This allows us to assess the benefits of arsenic- safe water by estimating a three equation system that includes averting actions, medical expenditures and a sickness function. We find that by reducing arsenic concentration to the safe limit of 50 mg/l, a representative household will benefit by Rs 297 ($7) per month. The current cost of supplying filtered piped water by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation to households is Rs 127 ($3) per month per household. Thus, investing in safe drinking water is economically feasible and households are willing to pay for such investments if made aware of the effective gain in welfare. Poor households, who make- up the highest proportion of arsenic- affected households and incur the largest number of sick days, will be major beneficiaries of such investments.
Joyashree Roy, Jadavpur University Joyashree Roy is Professor and Head of the Department of Economics at Jadavpur University. She has initiated and leads Global Change Programme of Jadavpur University. .She was at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California in the US at Environmental Technology and Energy Division as Ford Foundation Post Doctoral Fellow on Environmental Economics. She is in the coordinating lead authors team of AR4 Report of the Inter Governmental Panel for climate Change (IPCC) of UNFCCC. Prof. Roy has authored and jointly edited several books. She has written over thirty articles in peer reviewed leading professional journals.