Page "Opportunity cost" Paragraph 2

In environmental protection, opportunity cost is also applicable.

This has been demonstrated in the legislation that required the carcinogenic aromatics ( mainly reformate ) to be largely eliminated from gasoline.

Unfortunately, this required refineries to install equipment at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars – and pass the cost to the consumer.

The absolute number of cancer cases attributed to exposure to gasoline, however, is low, estimated a few cases per year in the U. S. Thus, the decision to require fewer aromatics has been criticized on the grounds of opportunity cost: the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on process redesign could have been spent on other, more fruitful ways of reducing deaths caused by cancer or automobiles.

These actions ( or strictly, the best one of them ) are the opportunity cost of reduction of aromatics in gasoline.