Assessing Human Health Impacts of Maritime Air Pollution

While local air pollutants are well-known to have detrimental impacts on human health, we lack a complete understanding of the economic costs imposed by the negative health effects from exposure to maritime air pollution.

In addition, because health effects are uncertain and likely to be heterogeneous due to the non-uniform population distribution and location of ships, it is difficult to design efficient policies to mitigate maritime emissions.

Nevertheless, the transition to a net-zero emissions economy will require the implementation of policies to curb emissions in the maritime sector.

By combining detailed Norwegian administrative data with highly granular geo-referenced data on shipping routes and air pollution, MARHEALTH aims to quantify the health effects of maritime air pollution and to assess the effectiveness of pollution mitigation policies in the shipping sector.

These objectives will be addressed through three specific subgoals: 1) Generate high-quality data sets by combining administrative health and socio-economic data on individuals with highly granular geo-referenced data on shipping routes of all container and passenger vessels and satellite- and ground-based environmental data on air quality and weather.

Further, I will collect and merge information on the transition from fossil fuel-operated to electrified passenger ships. 2) Empirical analysis of the health impacts of maritime air pollution by estimating causal impacts of pollution from ports.

Linked data on health outcomes with socioeconomic characteristics of individuals allows me to uncover socio-demographic disparities in the health effects of exposed individuals. 3) Empirical quantification of the benefits of green transition policies in the maritime sector by merging the environmental and individual-level data with information on shipping routes of electrified vessels to econometrically recover causal estimates.