Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the air, which is one of the leading causes of global warming. Additionally, fossil fuels release other chemicals and cause an increase in ground-level ozone, as well as fine particulate matter. These chemicals lead to a variety of costs for society including health care costs due to asthma attacks and heart and lung disease which lead to an increase in hospitalizations and premature deaths.

A new study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, has compared the costs of implementing carbon reduction policies to the health care costs associated with carbon emissions. The research, the most detailed of its kind to date, shows that the savings from reduced pollution can be up to 10 times the cost of policy changes.

“Carbon-reduction policies significantly improve air quality. In fact, policies aimed at cutting carbon emissions improve air quality by a similar amount as policies specifically targeting air pollution,” said Noelle Selin, an assistant professor of engineering systems and atmospheric chemistry at MIT, in a statement.

Researchers from MIT looked at three policies which would achieve the same reductions in the emissions: a clean-energy standard, a transportation policy, and a cap-and-trade program. Each simulation was designed to resemble proposed U.S. climate policies.

In each case the team found that emission policy changes resulted in health care savings. The amount of savings, however, varied dramatically. In the case of a transportation policy change, the resulting health care savings was only 26 percent of the $1 trillion policy cost. However, the estimated cost of putting in place a cap-and-trade program is only $14 billion and the estimated health care savings are 10.5 times that number.

The final program studied, a proposed clean energy standard with an estimated cost of $208 billion, essentially broke even. The estimated health care savings from this program was $247 billion.

“If cost-benefit analyses of climate policies don’t include the significant health benefits from healthier air, they dramatically underestimate the benefits of these policies,” said Tammy Thompson, lead author of the study, who conducted the research as a postdoc in Selin’s group and has since moved on to Colorado State University.

While the overall savings from emission reduction policies can be dramatic, it is worth noting that researchers found that there was a level at which reducing pollution no longer resulted in better health.

“While air-pollution benefits can help motivate carbon policies today, these carbon policies are just the first step. To manage climate change, we’ll have to make carbon cuts that go beyond the initial reductions that lead to the largest air-pollution benefits,” said Selin.