TY  - JOUR
AU  - Schlenker,Wolfram
AU  - Walker,W. Reed
TI  - Airports, Air Pollution, and Contemporaneous Health
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17684
PY  - 2011
Y2  - December 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17684
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17684.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Wolfram Schlenker
Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of California at Berkeley
329 Giannini Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel: 510/643-9676
Fax: 510/643-8911
E-Mail: schlenker@berkeley.edu

Reed Walker
50 University Hall, MC 7360
Berkeley, CA 94720-7360
E-Mail: rwalker@haas.berkeley.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2012-05-01
AB  - Airports are some of the largest sources of air pollution in the United States. We demonstrate that daily airport runway congestion contributes significantly to local pollution levels and contemporaneous health of residents living nearby and downwind from airports. Our research design exploits the fact that network delays originating from large airports on the East Coast increase runway congestion in California, which in turn increases daily pollution levels around California airports. Using the component of California air pollution driven by airport congestion, we find that carbon monoxide (CO) leads to significant increases in hospitalization rates for asthma, respiratory, and heart related emergency room admissions that are an order of magnitude larger than conventional estimates: A one standard deviation increase in daily pollution levels leads to an additional $1 million in hospitalization costs for respiratory and heart related admissions for the 6 million individuals living within 10km (6.2 miles) of the 12 largest airports in California. While infants and the elderly are more sensitive to air pollution, we also find significant relationships for the adult population. The health impacts are driven by CO, not NO2 or O3, and occur at levels far below existing EPA mandates. Our results suggest there may be sizable morbidity benefits from lowering the existing CO standard.
ER  -