Impacts to Human Health and the Environment

Apart from the risk assessment models, there exist models for assessing impacts to human health and the environment in LCA. Both tools [risk assessment and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA)] have different purposes and aims that are summarized in Table 1 [7]. 

Section 3.5 considers Impacts to Human Health and the Environment. While we have known for decades that many industrial chemicals are toxic, mounting... 

Based on these principles, the Green Chemistry initiative supports basic research to provide the chemical tools and methods necessary to design and develop environmentally sound products and processes. The EPA funded a series of basic research projects that consider impacts to human health and the environment in the design of chemical syntheses and other areas of chemistry. One of the outcomes of these efforts is the Green Chemistry Expert System (GCES) [35]. 

In this chapter the risk assessment is briefly introduced. Risk assessment is divided into four steps hazard identification, hazard characterization, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. This chapter also highlights five risk and life cycle impact assessment models (EUSES, USEtox, GLOBOX, SADA, and MAFRAM) that allows for assessment of risks to human health and the environment. In addition other 12 models were appointed. Finally, in the last section of this chapter, there is a compilation of useful data sources for risk assessment. The data source selection is essential to obtain high quality data. This source selection is divided into two parts. First, six frequently used databases for physicochemical... 

Due to this, it is necessary to assess the risk to human health and the environment due to the exposure to these chemical additives. In this chapter the impacts that a substance can cause to a certain receptor (humans and the environment) and the harms to the receptor at different exposure levels are identified in hazard identification and hazard characterization steps, respectively. Exposure assessment takes into account the amount, frequency, and duration of the exposure to the substance. Finally, risk characterization evaluates the increased risk caused by such exposure to the exposed population. 

When identifying impacts to human health or the environment and their stressors, there are two main approaches that can be used. One of these approaches focuses on the emission of a substance, called stressor, and tries to determine which impacts that can occur due to the emission of the substance (stressor to impact). The other approach instead focuses on an observed impact and tries to identify which stressor that caused the impact (impact to stressor). 

Though many of such chemicals have now been totally banned or subjected to other controls, measures were not taken until after the damage was done, because knowledge about the adverse impacts of these chemicals was not available before they were used in large quantities. Consequently, if chemicals are to provide benefits, their adverse impacts must be sufficiently well known in order to prevent or minimize their possible risks to human health and the environment. 

The EU s Sixth Environment Action Programme (EAP), Environment 2010 Qur future, Qur choice, includes Environment and Health as one of the four main target areas requiring greater effort. Air pollution is one of the issues highhghted in this area. The Sixth EAP aims to achieve levels of air quahty that do not result in unacceptable impacts on, and risks to, human health and the environment. 

A minor part of mined fossil fuels is used as a raw material for the chemical industry (e.g., plastics, synthetic fabrics, carbon black, ammonia, and fertilizers). The major part supplies the energy needs for modem society. Fossil fuels supply about 86% of global primary energy consumption (39% oil, 24% coal, and 23% natural gas), providing energy for transportation, electricity generation, and industrial, commercial, and residential uses (El A 2001). Coal, and to a lesser extent oil, combustion leaves a significant amount of solid waste. The treatment of solid waste from fossil fuel combustion is treated in different chapters of this book. In this chapter we focus on air emissions of fossil fuel combustion, and their impact on human health and the environment. 

The risk of negative impacts on human health and the environment increases with the amount of traded chemicals. It is therefore important to find out whether shortcomings of the traditional sales concept can be avoided by Chemical Leasing business models. 

The toxicity, bioaccumulative potential, and ecological impact of organohalogenated substances such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), polychlorinated d iben zo -pa ra - diox i n s (PCDDs), or polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs) have been extensively reviewed.95 98 All are referred to as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), that is, chemical substances that remain in the environment, bioaccumulate through the food chain, and pose a risk to human health and the environment. The international community is calling for action to reduce and then eliminate the production or formation of these substances and to monitor their emission. In this case, the detectability obtainable by analytical methods should be very low, since the limits established for these residues are in the ng per liter range. 

We wrote this book for consumers, farmers, and policy decision makers who want to make food choices and policy that will support ecologically responsible farming practices. It is also for consumers who want accurate information about genetically engineered crops and their potential impacts on human health and the environment. Our book is for those who wish to know more about the food they eat, besides just how to prepare it. It is for every shopper who has at one time or another perused the aisles of the local supermarket wondering what labels such as organic or GE-free really mean for the health of their families and for the future of the planet. 

Environmental risk or environmental impact is an essential concept of green engineering (http //www.apa.govi ogpugreenengmeaning).1 There are numerous literature references on environmental risk assessment and some are included in the list of references in this chapter. Risk assessment considers the extent of harm a chemical and its uses pose to human health and the environment. Mathematically, it is expressed as a function of hazard and exposure ... 

RBCA and the use of risk-based decision-making to establish health-protective remedial measures and controls at a site is a process that is producing health-protective and cost-effective corrective action sites. RBCA is used to decide the level of corrective action necessary at a site to protect human health and the environment, site-specific remediation goals (RBSLs or SSTLs), and the concentrations of constituents that can remain at the site because they will not impact human health and the environment. For sites already undergoing remediation, the RBSLs or SSTLs can be used to determine when the site no longer poses a threat to human health and the environment. Therefore, RBCA is useful both for newly discovered releases as well as for old releases that may have treatment systems with constituent concentrations reaching asymptotic levels. 

The food demand of an increasing world population challenges the scientific community to pay attention to how food production leads to environmental pressures and to accelerate efforts to develop methodologies to minimize their impacts on human health and the environment (Santos, 2008). 

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