Abstract
This article deals with assessment of health and environmental impacts from potential continuation of brown coal mining in the North Bohemian Coal Basin. Four defined mining variants, which are related to a possible modification of the regional ecological limits in the opencast mines Bílina and Československé armády have been reviewed.
The impacts are quantified in monetary terms – external costs - using the damage cost approach that reflects site-specific conditions of the assessment and enables us to structure the external costs estimates by the type of the impact on health, agricultural production and biodiversity. In the case of mining process, health effects due to dust emissions and noise pollution on the surrounding population were evaluated.
The external cost assessment of extracted coal usage in the defined mining variants for energy purposes consisted mainly in quantification of the health impacts due to primary and secondary pollutants.