Life Cycle Impact Assessment of chemicals: relevance and feasibility of spatial differentiation for ecotoxicity and human toxicity impact assessment
Environmental implications of the whole supply-chain of products, both goods and services, their use, and waste management, i.e. their entire life cycle from “cradle to grave” have to be considered to achieve more sustainable production and consumption patterns. Historically, Life Cycle Management (LCM), Assessment (LCA) and the related Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods have mostly relied on site-generic, not spatially resolved, models. In recent years, the relevance of accounting for spatial differentiation has been increasingly discussed in the context of LCA. Thus, several spatially distributed fate and transport models of chemicals, i.e. models allowing spatially explicit assessment of contaminants from a given spatial distribution of emission, were developed. The present paper presents an overview of these models, and discusses the relevance and feasibility of spatial differentiation of LCIA results in a Life Cycle Management perspective. Example of application of the models for human and ecotoxicity impact categories at various scales are presented.
2013-04-04
Life Cycle Management Conference organisers
JRC64734
978-94-007-1898-2
; MARINOV Dimitar; KOUNINA Anna; MARGNI Manuele; HUMBERT S.; JOLLIET Oliver; SHAKED Shanna; PENNINGTON David