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> 8.3 million dollars per life saved Interestingly, this is very close to what the EPA uses as the cost of a life -- a little above 9.1 million dollars when ad

• Aloha 9y ago
  Interesting - it seems like a really high number to me - but I'm just an engineer and environmental science isn't really a specialty of mine.
  • wyldfire 9y ago
    The EPA's rationale: > ... values are typically reported in units that match the aggregate dollar amount that a large group of people would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risks of dying in a year... > Suppose each person in a sample of 100,000 people were asked how much he or she would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risk of dying of 1 in 100,000, or 0.001%, over the next year. Since this reduction in risk would mean that we would expect one fewer death among the sample of 100,000 people over the next year on average, this is sometimes described as "one statistical life saved." Now suppose that the average response to this hypothetical question was $100. Then the total dollar amount that the group would be willing to pay to save one statistical life in a year would be $100 per person × 100,000 people, or $10 million.