Environmental and Human Health Impact Assessments

Once a complete energy and materials inventory of all of the various steps in a battery s life cycle has been established, the next steps are to categorize the inventoiy items into various groups. In general, these impacts have been realized on three areas  

Determining the impact assessment requires classification of each impact into one of these categories, characterization of the impact to establish some kind of relationship between the energy or materials input/output and a corresponding natural resource/human health/ecological impact, and finally the evaluation of the actual environmental effects. Many life cycle analyses admit that this last phase involves social, political, ethical, administrative, and financial judgments and that the quantitative analyses obtained in the characterization phase are only instruments by which to justify policy. A truly scientific life cycle analysis would end at the characterization phase, as many of the decisions made beyond that point are qualitative and subjective in nature. 

For example, the five impact assessment evaluation methods reviewed in the 1997 comparison (Morrow 1997) were as follows  

There is really very little consistency across these environmental impact assessment methods except that the Swedish and Dutch systems rate cadmium the battery metal with the most adverse effects, while the Tellus and Ecoscarcity Methods rate mercury the most adverse battery metal. Zinc, manganese, nickel and even lead have relatively low effects except in the U.S. EPA system, which however is the one system which is most closely tied to actual quantitative assessments of enviromnental and human health toxicological end points. What is very surprising is the relatively low impact values for mercury in the Swedish and Dutch schemes given the general worldwide concern for mercury. 

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ENVIRONMENTAL AND HUMAN HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENTS OF BATTERY SYSTEMS... 

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