Combustion-generated pollutants, principally those from solid-fuels including biomass and coal when cooking and heating, bring out a significant public health hazard in both developed and developing countries. Most of the existing studies addressing this issue focus on developing countries, and...

We randomized 43 villages in Bangladesh to receive information on well-water arsenic that emphasized water safety relative to the national standard (bright-line message) or provided additional information on how risks from exposure increase with arsenic levels (gradient message). The gradient...

A risk assessment model is developed to relate adverse health effects to alternative carbon monoxide standards. The analysis requires information in the form of available data and expert judgments concerning factors such as ambient CO level, human exposure to CO, physiological responses, and...

In the past few years, there has been an increase in public concern about the medical wastes management on a global basis and a significant effort has been directed toward proper and safe management of hazardous medical wastes. However, if there is not a clear understanding of the risks,...

This paper studies choices on prevention and cure in a context where an agent bears a health risk. In this framework we first analyze interdependence between the optimal levels of prevention and cure. Second, we study the effects on optimal choices of a change in the cost of one of the two...

From 1999 to 2004, the European Union had in place a moratorium on new genetically modified (GM) products. This moratorium created a tense trade dispute between the United States and the EU. While the moratorium has now been lifted, differences remain between the EU's and US's approach to GM...

Any analysis of how changing environmental hazards impact on public health is fundamentally constrained unless it recognizes the centrality of the social and behavioral dimensions of risk. This paper reports on a research project conducted among low-income peri-urban households in the Mekong...

Climate change scenarios predict an increase of extreme rain events, which will increase the risk of wastewater flooding and of missing legal water quality targets. This study elicits the willingness to pay to reduce ecological and health risks from combined sewer overflows in rivers and lakes,...

The US food industry faces tobacco-style lawsuits for providing misleading information about health risks linked to the consumption of fatty products. This paper investigates the link between alternative liability rules and the incentive for disclosing health information to consumers. We show...

Climate change scenarios predict an increase of extreme rain events, which will increase the risk of wastewater flooding and of missing legal water quality targets. This study elicits the willingness to pay to reduce ecological and health risks from combined sewer overflows (CSOs) in rivers and...