Health costs of environmental pollution faced by underground coal miners: Evidence from Balochistan, Pakistan

Muhammad Ayaz, Noor Jehan, Joanna Nakonieczny, Urszula Mentel and Qamar Uz Zaman

Resources Policy, 2022, vol. 76, issue C

Abstract: There is plenty of research on the environmental effects of coal mining. However, the economic valuation of health costs is seldom addressed. To know this, we have estimated health costs faced by miners working in underground coal mines in Balochistan, Pakistan. To compare the cost of illness caused by coal mines' pollution, we took two samples, the control group and the treatment group. The treatment group consisted of 150 underground coal miners working in different mines. The control group consisted of randomly selected farmers, construction workers, and waiters (fifty each). The double-hurdle model was used to estimate the factors affecting miner’ decision to visit doctors in the first tier, while the second tier estimated the costs incurred on the treatment. Results indicate that socioeconomic and demographic variables such as age, education level, age when work started, income or wage rate, frequency of illness, living condition, sources of safe drinking water, and nationality (whether Afghan or Pakistani) of the respondents have significant impacts on the decision of getting treatment, and costs of illness of coal mine workers. Environmental variables, including methane and carbon monoxide, elevate the health cost of coal miners. The cost of illness increases with the narrow size of the coal seam. It is concluded that the coal minerssuffer from different ailments (respiratory diseases, irritation of the body, gastrointestinal problems, musculoskeletal harms, and headache). Their costs of illness are much higher as compared to noncoal workers. Our work addresses coal mining from a cost perspective, which can significantly enhance the pay system by including user fees in the wages. Among the various possible policy interventions, motivational training for miners to use protective measures, improved living environment, provision of nearby health facilities, employing advanced mining methods, and agreeing on a standard procedure correlated to seam size for degasification may be considered critical policy recommendations.

Keywords: Environmental pollution; Health costs; Coal mines; Double-hurdle model; Frequency of illness; Costs of illness; Poisonous gases; Structure of coal mines and coal workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301420721005432
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jrpoli:v:76:y:2022:i:c:s0301420721005432

DOI: 10.1016/j.resourpol.2021.102536

Access Statistics for this article

Resources Policy is currently edited by R. G. Eggert

More articles in Resources Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().