The Development and Application of the "DALY"-Based Environmental Risk Assessment Methods with a Case Study on the Impact of PM2.5 in Beijing

The "Four-step" method is the well accepted procedure for risk assessment, which is also adopted in China This method regards the human body as a benchmark and takes the effects on human health to characterize the risk. On the basis of the regular "Four-Step" method, the present study proposes a quantitative evaluation on the scenario that risk already occurred with the relevant impact represented by the indicator of "disability-adjusted life year" (hereinafter referred to as "DALY"). Based on the proposed methods, this study assessed the impact of "haze", namely, PM2.5, on the residents in Beijing in 2013. According to the assessment, the PM2.5-related death and Cardiovascular Disease are the most significant contributors in terms of health time losses of the residents. The total DALY caused by PM2.5 in 2013 is calculated to be 1557806 year, which is further converted to economic loss of RMB 15.58 Billion Yuan. This study also put forward the assessment procedure of environmental risk which can be used as the guideline for relevant research and works.