Moving towards safe and sustainable innovations is an international policy ambition. In the on-hand manuscript, a concept combining safe by design and sustainability was implemented through the integration of human and environmental risk assessment, life cycle assessment as well as an assessment of the economic viability. The result is a nested and iterative process in form of a decision tree that integrates these three elements in order to achieve sustainable, safe and competitive materials, products or services. This approach, embedded into the stage-gate-model for safe by design, allows to reduce the uncertainty related to the assessment of risks and impacts by improving the quality of the data collected along each stage. In the second part of the manuscript, the application is shown for a case study dealing with the application of nanoparticles for Li-Ion batteries. One of the general conclusions out of this case study is that data gaps are a key aspect in view of the reliability of the results.
The deployment of hydrogen technologies in the energy mix and the use of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCV) are expected to significantly reduce European greenhouse emissions. We carry out a social cost-benefit analysis to estimate the period of socio-economic conversion, period for which the replacement of gasoline internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) by FCV becomes socio-economically profitable. In this study, we considered a hydrogen production mix of five technologies: natural gas reforming processes with or without carbon capture and storage, electrolysis, biogas processes and on-site production.We estimate two external costs: the abatement cost of CO 2 through FCV and the use of non-renewable resources in the manufacture of fuel cells by measuring platinum depletion. We forecast that carbon market could finance approximately 10 % of the deployment cost of hydrogen-based transport and that an early economic conversion could be targeted for FCV. Almost ten years could be saved by considering externalities. 1
For more than a decade, the integration of human and environmental risk assessment (RA) has become an attractive vision. At the same time, existing European regulations of chemical substances such as REACH (EC Regulation No. 1907/2006), the Plant Protection Products Regulation (EC regulation 1107/2009) and Biocide Regulation (EC Regulation 528/2012) continue to ask for sector-specific RAs, each of which have their individual information requirements regarding exposure and hazard data, and also use different methodologies for the ultimate risk quantification. In response to this difference between the vision for integration and the current scientific and regulatory practice, the present paper outlines five medium-term opportunities for integrating human and environmental RA, followed by detailed discussions of the associated major components and their state of the art. Current hazard assessment approaches are analyzed in terms of data availability and quality, and covering non-test tools, the integrated testing strategy (ITS) approach, the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) concept, methods for assessing uncertainty, and the issue of explicitly treating mixture toxicity. With respect to exposure, opportunities for integrating exposure assessment are discussed, taking into account the uncertainty, standardization and validation of exposure modeling as well as the availability of exposure data. A further focus is on ways to complement RA by a socio-economic assessment (SEA) in order to better inform about risk management options. In this way, the present analysis, developed as part of the EU FP7 project HEROIC, may contribute to paving the way for integrating, where useful and possible, human and environmental RA in a manner suitable for its coupling with SEA.
This paper presents an investigation of the variability of concentrations of Giardia cyst and Cryptosporidium oocyst in two main rivers of Ile-de-France: the Seine (upstream from Paris) and its largest tributary: the Marne. The first goal of this study was to examine risk of presence of Cryptosporidium and Giardia at the drinking water treatment plants' intakes at high concentrations. A second goal was to study the relationship between parasite concentrations and a variety of more easily measured water quality parameters (microbial or physicochemical) which could be used as risk indicators. Two aspects were particularly addressed: the influence of upstream waste water discharges, and the influence of rain fall and river floods on parasite concentrations. Preliminary results of an ongoing study are also presented: they show possible influence of non-point sources on parasite concentrations. Overall results show that parasite sedimentation in rivers is high, urban run-off and resuspension of particles could be at certain times the main factors responsible for peak pathogen levels in raw water.
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