Values assessments environmental impact assessment

Hyman, E.L. and Stiftel, B. (1988) Combining Facts and Values in Environmental Impact Assessment. Westview Press, Boulder. 

Selecting variables is difficult and yet is crucial to the success of the monitoring exercise. One way is to define valued ecosystem components and construct a matrix of interactions between causes and effects. These interactions are then scored for magnitude and relative importance. Those which show the greatest effects are then considered as monitoring variables. This system is used effectively at present for environmental impact assessment in North America and Europe. At present it can be criticised on the grounds of subjective assessment of importance and magnitude, but there are no methods in which environmental quality determinations such as these can be made more independent. 

There is a strong scientific interest in the value of establishing global baseline data for overall levels of various classes of pollutants by analysis of Antarctic material. In addition, for Antarctic operators needing to provide monitoring for Environmental Impact Assessment, there is the need to determine the baseline inputs... 

Environmental impact assessment has already shown its value for implementing and strengthening sustainable development, as it combines the precautionary principle of preventing environmental damage and also arranges for public participation. EIA has also become the major tool for an integrated approach to the protection of the environment since it requires a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of an activity on the environment, contrary to the traditional sectoral approach. Moreover, EIA requires the formulation of alternatives to the proposed activity and brings facts and information on environmental impacts to the attention of the decision-makers and the public. 

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. 

Develop an valuative tool to assess environmental impact of synthetic methods... 

Environmental risks are normally controlled by rules and regulations rather than an analysis of risk. They are also assessed and controlled through the use of Environmental Impact Assessments, which are rather like Safety Cases (Chapter 2) in that they require the facility management to account for environmental values in their decisions and to justify those decisions in light of detailed environmental studies and public comments on the potential environmental impacts (Holder, 2004). 

Depending on the application that is studied, the value and impact terms in the eco-efficiency definition can be different entities. The created value can be, e.g., a provided supply, a fulfilled function, a satisfied demand, or an added value. The environmental impact can be some measure of a specific type of impact (e.g., the carbon footprint, the use of water or some other resource, or the emission of toxic compotmds to air) or an aggregated measure of environmental impact (see entries on Environmental Impact and Environmental Impact Assessment). 

Another approach which also provides a single-score assessment, but is based on a different concept, is represented by the method of environmental scarcity developed at the Swiss federal environmental agency [14]. It assesses environmental impacts relative to poHtically defined limit values by providing so-called ecofactors, which are calculated by comparing the annual actual flow of a pollutant... 

Phase I - an environmental impact assessment for the drug based on physico-chemical properties, its likely penetration into the environment and its metabolic profile in target patient animals and, if a certain trigger value is exceeded ... 

After the environmental impact assessment, one can see (Tables 1.15 and 1.16) that the first processing path is a better solution with respect to environmental impact since it has a lower total carbon footprint and lower values for the PEI metrics. This is due to the fact that the first process uses a waste heat stream as internal utility instead of using an external utility. Moreover, even when including a high electricity consumer such as the compressor, the first processing path includes coproduction of electricity that fuUy satisfies the electricity demands. 

The half-life, f1/2, of a substance is the time needed for its concentration to fall to one-half its initial value. Knowing the half-lives of pollutants such as chlorofluoro-carbons allows us to assess their environmental impact. If their half-lives are short, they may not survive long enough to reach the stratosphere, where they can destroy ozone. Half-lives are also important in planning storage systems for radioactive materials, because the decay of radioactive nuclei is a first-order process. 

Impact Assessment. One of the more common methods of assessing the data is to put a numerical value on various potential environmental impact criteria namely ... 

Both the value of and problems associated with LCA are evident from a study of the many assessments carried out on the environmental impact of... 

For a full life cycle assessment, the basic principle is that each material and energy input into the system should be traced back to natural resources obtained from the environment, or to releases into the environment. These are termed elementary flows , and they represent inputs into or outputs from the system being analysed. In an analysis of this type, it may be relatively straightforward to assign a material value to a flow of (for example) water effluent into the environment, but what may be less certain is the environmental impact of such a flow in a quantitative sense. 

Although the experts assessments vary enormously by country, the mean values show that the most important subjects with respect to the environmental impacts of organic farming are landscape, soil, ground and surface water and biodiversity. Climate as well as air and energy uses are, however, assessed to be of only minor importance. Only two experts identified animal health and welfare to be of special importance for organic farming in this context. 

To define the value of biodegradable polymers, the overall system costs and the environmental impact of individual products in their respective target applications have to be considered. To this end, comprehensive life-cycle assessments (EGAs) are an appropriate tool, especially when accompanied by costs evaluations that cover all phases from cradle to grave. 

To test these models, their predictions must be compared to the observed concentrations of various species model inputs are adjusted to obtain acceptable agreement between the observed and predicted values. These models can then be used, in combination with the documented impacts on receptors, to develop health and/or environmental risk assessments and various control strategy options. 

In contrast to the estimates of the costs of REACH, no financial estimates of the health and environmental benefits of REACH were made by the impact assessment the report pointed out that the lack of knowledge about exposure to and the effects of chemicals - a knowledge gap that REACH is intended to fill — makes quantitative assessment of them impossible. But the report does say that the evidence available supports the assessment that the health burden related to chemicals is considerable (CEC, 2003, p25) and that it seems that the impacts of chemicals on the environment are potentially large (CEC, 2003, p26). However, a calculation of the monetary value of possible health benefits was made as an illustration assuming 1 per cent of disease is attributable to chemicals, and that this would be reduced by 10 per cent following the implementation of REACH, 45,000 disability adjusted life years (DALYs) of disease would be avoided every year. This is equivalent to 4500 lives per year, assuming 10 DALYs is equivalent to one mortal-... 

Once emissions have been classified into a given environmental impact, they must be assessed. This means calculating the quantitative value of this impact. Environmental impacts are calculated by means of conversion factors, or... 

Almost all the PTS chemicals being lipophilic, non-degradable and not easily excreted from animal bodies were not found in considerable concentrations in the animal excreta like feces and urine. The only study by Singh et al. (2004) on impact assessment of sewage treatment plants on the environmental quality of the waste disposal area in Varanasi and Kanpur, two big cities in India showed that the mean values of HCHs and DDTs in the urine samples of the people in the exposed area were higher than those living in unexposed areas, the levels being lower than those in blood of the same subjects. Other than these, we could not find any other data available in the published literature on the levels of PTS in Indian human urine or feces. 

In the UK, a Government funded initiative is in place, looking at how collection systems could be established for PVC waste from the construction and automotive industries. The quality of recovered materials and their use in high value products will be assessed, along with the associated economic and environmental impacts (68) (www.recyclepvc.com). 

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