Economic Valuation of Chemicals‑Related Health Effects

Executive summary

Chemicals play an important role in our daily life and are an essential part of modern society. While offering numerous advantages, they must be soundly managed to protect human health and the environment. The assessment of chemicals management options often relies on cost-benefit analyses that compare the societal benefits of regulating chemicals against the costs of policy implementation. To adequately assess such benefits, information on both mortality and morbidity effects is needed. However, assessments of the latter have historically been lacking given the challenge of valuing morbidity profiles across disease and illness states, while capturing the physical and psychological experience of suffering.

The OECD project on Surveys on Willingness-to-pay to Avoid negative Chemicals-related Health Effects (SWACHE) attempts to fill this gap by establishing internationally comparable values of individuals’ willingness-to-pay to reduce their risk of developing or worsening a specific health outcome. Where possible, these estimates are converted into corresponding values of a statistical case to derive the monetary value that a population assigns to avoiding one statistical case of a given health condition among its members. In turn, values of a statistical case can be used in cost-benefit analyses to enhance the quality of policy impact assessments to quantify the intangible welfare benefits associated with chemicals regulation.

This report provides harmonised estimates for ten health effects studied in the SWACHE project so far: asthma risk and severity in adults and children, IQ loss in children, chronic kidney disease, infertility, very low birth weight, hypertension, miscarriage, underactive thyroid, non-fatal cancer and skin sensitisation. To derive willingness-to-pay estimates, two rounds of surveys (96 in total) were implemented between 2022 and 2025 across 28 countries with over 116 000 respondents. The surveyed countries are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic (hereafter 'Czechia'), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In each country, between 1 and 10 surveys were implemented, collecting a minimum of 1 200 responses per health effect.

Key findings

• Individuals are willing to pay a significant amount to reduce their risk of developing various negative health effects linked to chemicals. The average value of a statistical case pooled across the surveyed countries ranges from USD 5 000 for skin sensitisation to USD 1 273 000 for very low birth weight.

• An individual’s willingness-to-pay to reduce their risk of negative health effects associated with chemicals generally increases with the size of the risk reduction, decreases as costs of the reduced risk option increase and is positively correlated with income. However, at the country level, the correlation between gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and willingness-to-pay is inconsistent across endpoints, suggesting that preferences for health risk reductions are significantly impacted by personal or household income, but they cannot be straightforwardly attributed to a country’s national wealth.

• A survey respondent’s initial risk of developing a given health outcome does not systematically influence their valuation of avoiding the outcome across the ten health endpoints. For example, baseline risk is significantly positively associated with willingness-to-pay to avoid infertility and IQ loss in children, and also to reduce asthma severity in both adults and children. However, it is negatively associated with willingness-to-pay to avoid hypertension and is not significant for other endpoints.

• No apparent relationship was found between disease prevalence in each surveyed country and willingness-to-pay estimates. Differences most likely reflect a combination of factors operating within each country, such as the reliability of healthcare systems, greater awareness of a given disease and available treatment options, the burden of healthcare costs, and perception of chemicals-related risks and regulation.

Policy applications and considerations

• The willingness-to-pay and value of a statistical case estimates provided herein can be readily combined with estimated policy impacts, which are typically expressed as the number of cases avoided or increased by the introduction or removal of a given policy under consideration. In the context of a policy aiming at improving quality of life and reducing negative health outcomes, the associated economic benefits can be calculated by multiplying the number of cases avoided by the corresponding willingness-to-pay or value of a statistical case estimate.

• While the estimates provided in this report are developed in the context of chemicals exposure, they can also be applied to the economic analysis of other health and environmental policies, including air pollution or water regulations, preventive care programmes, or the setting of health and environmental standards. Willingness-to-pay and value of a statistical case estimates described herein can be used in cost-benefit analyses addressing any of the ten health effects, provided that the endpoint targeted by the policy matches the project endpoint definition.

• The SWACHE project offers a unique basis for applying benefit transfer methodologies to provide willingness-to-pay and value of a statistical case estimates for non-surveyed countries. Leveraging a newly developed benefit transfer methodology unique for the SWACHE project, willingness-to-pay and value of a statistical case estimates are also provided for each of the 10 health effects for all 38 OECD Member countries and South Africa.

• Future research could focus on developing more robust valuations for comorbidities for the endpoints covered in the SWACHE project, combining expertise in epidemiology and economic analysis. Additional research could also explore how respondents’ attitudes toward chemicals and cultural and traditional factors shape how individuals perceive and value different health effects. Finally, as highlighted in this report, there are thousands of health outcomes related to exposure to chemicals. Future research could therefore also continue to uncover economic valuations for additional health effects.