Life cycle impacts

Once the life-cycle inventory has been quantified, we can attempt to characterize and assess the eflfects of the environmental emissions in a life-cycle impact analysis. While the life-cycle inventory can, in principle at least, be readily assessed, the resulting impact is far from straightforward to assess. Environmental impacts are usually not directly comparable. For example, how do we compare the production of a kilogram of heavy metal sludge waste with the production of a ton of contaminated aqueous waste A comparision of two life cycles is required to pick the preferred life cycle. 

FIGURE IS.4 Elements of the life cycle impact assessment procedure. 

ISO, Environmental Management—Life Cycle Assessment—Life Cycle Impact Assessment (ISO/DIS 14042),... 

In order of decreasing sophistication and cost, the main methods for assessing the life-cycle impact are ... 

Including water in mass metrics can be a somewhat contentious issue at times. Water by itself does not, in many instances, constitute a significant environmental impact. However, in the case of highly purified water there are generally significant life-cycle impacts related to the chemicals and equipment used to purify the water. This is especially true for such industries as the semi-conductor industry, pharmaceuticals and some... 

Udo de Haes, H., Finnveden, G., Goedkoop, M. etal. (eds.) (2002) Life Cycle Impact Assessment Striving Towards Best Practice. SETAC Press, Pensacola, FL. 

Life Cycle Interpretation. The results obtained within the Life Cycle Inventory and/or the Life Cycle Impact Assessment are interpreted in the light of the Goal and Scope Definition (e.g., by means of sensitivity or uncertainty analyses) in order to draw conclusions and make recommendations. ... 

The eco-indicator 99 (2001) A Damage Oriented Method for Life Cycle Impact Assessment. PRe Consultant. 

ISO 14042 2000 (2000) Environmental Management - Life Cycle Assessment - Life Cycle Impact Assessment. European Commitee for Standardisation, Brussels, Belgium. 

Life-Cycle Impact Assessment Striving towards Best Practice Udo de Haes, Einnveden, Goedkoop, Hauschild, Hertwich, Hofstetter, Jolliet, Klopffer, Krewitt, Lindeijer, Miiller-Wenk, Olsen, Pennington, Potting, Steen, editors... 

The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is used to assess the results of the LCA and evaluate the impact on the environment in the various impact categories. These impact categories include, for example, human health, GWP, energy, water use, eutrophication, ozone depletion, aquatic toxicity, and land use (ISO, 2006b). LCA may focus on one or more impact categories. The results may be normalized, weighted, and aggregated in optional steps of the LCIA for comparison to political objectives, for example. In addition, sensitivity analyses are often conducted over the entire LCA to evaluate the variation in the results due to selected factors. 

Reduced Life Cycle Impact of structures on the environment, especially by Choices of Materials (e.g., depending on local availability and forest management practices wood can be a versatile, sustainable alternative) and Construction Methods that Minimize the Production of GHGs —Construction Waste Management including Recycling and Reuse. 

The inventory results should be presented in clear form, how much and what substances from the environment enter the system and how much get out. These results serve for subsequent life cycle impact assessment [48], The aim of the life cycle impact assessment is to measurably compare the environmental impacts of product systems and to compare their severity with new quantifiable variables identified as impact category. The impact categories are areas of specific environmental problems such as global warming, climate changes, acidification, eutrophication, ecotoxicity and others. Already in the phase of definition of the LCA study scope, it is necessary to describe what impact category will be applied and which of their environmental mechanisms will serve as a basis for impact assessment [46],... 

Abstract Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful tool to assess impacts of cradle-to-grave chains of products/services. In the Riskcycle framework, the focus is on additives. Additives are usually minor constituents of products, but depending on their specific properties they can be important in the total scope of impacts of such products. In the LCA literature, additives are hardly visible. Most case studies of products containing additives do not mention them. The reasons for this are unclear, but are at least partly due to the fact that information on additives is not included in standard LCA databases. This is true for both life cycle inventory (LCI) and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) databases. Therefore, it is difficult to conclude whether or not additives indeed are important contributors to environmental impacts over the life cycle. 

Additives do not contribute significantly to the life cycle impacts of plastics and paper products, and therefore do not come out in the results. 

The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) may be restricted to one or a few impact categories, where additives do not contribute much. 

Life cycle impact characterization factors may be missing for a lot of additives. 

As mentioned before, additives do not come out as contributing to life cycle impacts in any of the 110 case studies reviewed. From the above, it is clear that a straightforward LCA case study using a standard LCI database would indeed not show additives, because they are not present in these databases. The fact that the plastics data are aggregate data masks any omissions, implying it is possible that case study performers were unaware of it. For example the studies on (waste treatment) of plastic packaging [6-12], plastic cup studies [13,14] and some studies on automotive parts [15, 16] do not mention additives at all. 

To test the assumption whether additives indeed do not contribute to any significant amount to life cycle impacts of plastics, Van Oers and Van der Voet [1] conducted a case study on PVC flooring, appearing in this volume as well. They conclude that additives can indeed contribute to life cycle impacts, and therefore more attention should be paid to additives. Closing the data gaps therefore seems to be a very important issue. 

Hertwich EG (1999) Toxic equivalency addressing human health effects in life cycle impact assessment. PhD Thesis, University of California, Berkeley... 

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... 

Keywords Environmental and risk assessment models, Life-cycle Impact assessment models, Physicochemical and toxicological database... 

Table 1 Differences in the principles of assessing the potential for ecotoxicological and toxicological effects in risk assessment vs. life cycle impact assessment (based on Olsen et al. [7])...

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]. 

Olsen SI, Christensen FM, Hauschild M et al (2001) Life cycle impact assessment and risk assessment of chemicals -a methodological comparison. Environ Impact Assess Rev 21 385 104... 

Rosenbaum R, Bachmann TM, Gold LS, Huijbregts MAJ, Jolliet O, Juraske R, Koehler A, Larsen HF, MacLeod M, Margni M, McKone TE, Payet J, Schuhmacher M, van de Meent D, Hauschild MZ (2008) USEtox the UNEP-SETAC toxicity model recommended characterisation factors for human toxicity and freshwater ecotoxicity in life cycle impact assessment. Int J Life Cycle Assess 13 532-546... 

Jolliet O, Margni M, Charles R, Humbert S, Payet J, Rebitzer G, Rosenbaum R (2003) IMPACT 2002+ a new life cycle impact assessment methodology. Int J LCA 8 324-330... 

ISO (2000) ISO 14042 Environmental management - Life cycle assessment - Life cycle impact assessment. International Organisation for Standardisation, Geneva... 

The aim of the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is to facilitate the interpretation of the results of the inventory analysis. The result of the inventory analysis is an emission profile for each alternative system. In this study the emission profile is the total of all emissions to air, water and soil from the grave-to-cradle chain for the use of cushion vinyl floor covering, including the up chain processes, like electricity production and the down chain processes, like the incineration and landfill of the waste. Such an emission profile may consist of hundreds of emissions and extractions. In LCA impact assessment the total of interventions (emissions, extractions) of a process chain is evaluated in terms of environmental problems (impact categories). 

So from the point of view of additives, it seems that they may indeed contribute significantly to life cycle impacts. The case study of PVC flooring shows that additives contribute significantly, not just to toxicity impact due to DEHP emissions but also to global warming due to GHG emissions along the Cradle-to-Grave chain of the compound DEHP. 

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