Estimating the effects of air pollution on buildings and structures [electronic resource] : The US experience since 1985 and some lessons for the future

Published: Washington, D.C. : United States. Dept. of Energy, 1996.
Oak Ridge, Tenn. : Distributed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Dept. of Energy.
Physical Description: 14 pages : digital, PDF file
Additional Creators: Brookhaven National Laboratory, United States. Department of Energy, and United States. Department of Energy. Office of Scientific and Technical Information

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Summary

Damage to the built environment has always been the foster child of the environmental movement in the United States. Although the Clean Air Act includes damage to materials as one of the welfare effects to be considered when setting secondary air quality standards, the main activity by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in this discipline seems to be the periodic review of literature required to assemble the official documents needed to review these standards. The one important exception was the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP), which included a materials damage research activity amounting to a few percent of its total $500 million budget. The 1990 NAPAP State of Science and Technology Report includes three of its twenty-seven chapters on this topic, in addition to portions of the chapter on economic valuation methods. The 1990 NAPAP Integrated Assessment Report debated the economic importance of damage to galvanized steel and to carbonate stone buildings, discussed confounding and mitigating factors for damage to paints, and listed some priorities for assessment of damage to cultural resources. However, in contrast to NAPAP`s views, one independent assessment was that {open_quotes}The NAPAP study found that, at current levels, the major negative effects of acid deposition are probably reduced visibility and accelerated deterioration of outdoor cultural resources{close_quotes}. Since the 1990 reports and the passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, NAPAP has contracted to a fraction of its former size. NAPAP now produces a biennial Report to Congress; release of the 1994 report is reported to be imminent. This paper will attempt to review what was accomplished by NAPAP with respect to economic assessment of materials damage and the supporting research and will then go on to postulate some guidelines for future assessments.

Report Numbers

E 1.99:bnl--62844
E 1.99: conf-960184--1
conf-960184--1
bnl--62844

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Note

Published through SciTech Connect.
01/01/1996.
"bnl--62844"
" conf-960184--1"
"DE96008868"
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe workshop on economic evaluation of air pollution abatement and damage to buildings including cultural heritage, Stockholm (Sweden), 23-25 Jan 1996.
Lipfert, F.W.

Funding Information

AC02-76CH00016

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