Gauging Control Technology and Regulatory Impacts in Occupational Safety and Health: An Appraisal of OSHA's Analytic Approach. Washington, DC: OTA-ENV-635. 1995.
The short of it: cost projections based on existing technologies vastly overstate the actual ex post costs, due to inevitable technical innovation. It's difficult to read this report and not conclude that static CBA is simply an obfuscation.
Peter
John Henry wrote:
Interesting responses to the arsenic issue. Especially coming from an
economics list.Economics, of whatever flavor or wing, is in large part about allocation of
finite "scarce" resources. Shouldn't we look at the arsenic issue in that
regard? Especially here.In other words, I doubt that there are more than 2-3 people in the world
who wound deny that having zero arsenic in water is a good thing. I'm
certainly not one of them. There is probably some marginal benefit and
probably no harm in water with zero arsenic.There is, of course, the question of just how much benefit reducing the
levels from 50-10 will bring. My understanding is, relatively little. For
the sake of argument, I'll assume that there is some benefit.The other side of the equation is, what is the "cost" of getting to
zero? What happens if the municipal water department, decides to trade
off, say, flouridation to cover the cost of additional arsenic removal? Or
perhaps it postpones building additional waste treatment facilities? or...?
Is that community going to be better or worse off as a result of reducing
arsenic levels?Since most water supplies are government owned and operated rather than
private (other than individual wells) profit motive won't be a factor here,
will it?<G>In other words, has anyone here done or seen a cost-benefit analysis of
this arsenic reduction?Best,
John R Henry CPP
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