Estimated Values of Avoiding Cancer Risks by Cancer Site and Population

In this paper, we present a standardized approach for using cancer incidence and survival data to account for the timing between a reduction in carcinogen exposure and the subsequent reduction in cancer risk and fatality. While the estimates for this timing between a reduction in carcinogen exposure and reduced cancer risk would ideally come from high-quality studies specifically examining this question, very few such studies are available. Thus, we designed an approach to account for this timing when sufficient data are not available elsewhere. Our approach can be used in estimating monetized values for achieving small reductions in the risks for many common specific types of cancer in benefit–cost analyses of regulatory and non-regulatory policies in the United States that achieve cancer risk reductions by reducing carcinogen exposures. We provide estimated values for 108 different cancer sites and for all cancer sites combined. We accompany this paper with a spreadsheet-based tool that presents our results separately for non-fatal and fatal risks so that results can easily be calculated using different combinations of discount rates, latency between carcinogen exposure and cancer diagnosis, values for the willingness-to-pay to avoid fatal and non-fatal cancer risks, and potentially affected populations.