A NOTE ON ESTIMATING THE MORTALITY COSTS OF LEAD EMISSIONS IN ENGLANDAND WALES - FILLING THE DATA GAPS

Despite substantial falls in lead emissions and ambient air lead level s over the last two decades, it remains valuable to attempt to estimat e the costs of lead induced health effects. We consider the epidemiolo gical framework assembled by Ostro (1994) to estimate the mortality co sts of lead emissions in England and Wales. Unfortunately, the require d data are sparse. However, the Ostro methodology is deterministic, to the extent that if we have the necessary data for a single year, then we can estimate deviations from that year on the assumption that othe r population characteristics are unchanged. We demonstrate how gaps in the 1992 data can be filled using the 1987 dataset. This enables us t o estimate the mortality costs to urban adult males in England and Wal es to have been approximately pound 70 million in 1992. We also consid er the robustness of this result.