Volume 21, Number 3 (Summer) 1986
Dewees, Donald N., and Ronald J. Daniels. 1986. "The Cost of Protecting Occupational Health: The Asbestos Case." Journal of Human Resources 21(3):381-396.
This paper estimates the cost of reducing the mortality risks from asbestos exposure. We use a dose-response model to predict cancer-related fatalities caused by exposure to asbestos. We then estimate the cost of controlling these exposures in the workplace and calculate the cost per life saved at different exposure levels. We argue that current government regulation in the United States and Canada controlling the amount of asbestos to which a worker may be exposed yields a cost per life saved far in excess of the costs for occupational accidents.
Dewees is a professor of economics and law and Daniels is a law student at the University of Toronto. Much of the work for this paper was performed while the authors were Director of Research and Staff, respectively, for the Ontario Royal Commission on Asbestos. Subsequent financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged. They would like to thank Morley Gunderson, Sam Rea, John Ham, and Sandra Tychsen for helpful comments on earlier drafts.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X