Estimation of Socio-economic Costs of Illness due to Blood Concentration of Heavy Metals in Koreans among the Public

Abstract

This study attempts to estimate socio-economic costs of illness due to heavy metals, in particular, lead, cadmium, and arsenic, which have drawn special attention recently in food hazard management. For our analysis, we listed illnesses related to the three heavy metals and examined, using a logistic regression, their association with the blood concentration of each of these heavy metals. Next, by using COI (cost-of-illness) method, socio-economic costs caused by illnesses which were found to be related to one of the three heavy metals were calculated and finally total costs of illness due to lead, cadmium, and arsenic were derived. The results indicate that among chronic diseases, four illnesses were related to lead and six and five illnesses were related to, respectively, cadmium and arsenic. The total socio-economic costs of the illnesses which were found to be related with three heavy metals were about 23.7 trillion won and the total costs of illnesses caused by blood concentration of lead, cadmium, and arsenic among the public were 165.0 billion, 346.8 billion won, and 341.9 billion, respectively. The contribution of this study lies in providing reliable information regarding costs of illness which would be a lower bound for the cost due to heavy metals and providing an useful tool to judge the effect of food and health policies dealing with other hazardous substances.