An Approach to Integrating Occupational Safety and Health into Life Cycle Assessment: Development and Application of Work Environment Characterization Factors

Abstract

Summary Integrating occupational safety and health (OSH) into life cycle assessment (LCA) may provide decision makers with insights and opportunities to prevent burden shifting of human health impacts between the nonwork environment and the work environment. We propose an integration approach that uses industry‐level work environment characterization factors (WE‐CFs) to convert industry activity into damage to human health attributable to the work environment, assessed as disability‐adjusted life years (DALYs). WE‐CFs are ratios of work‐related fatal and nonfatal injuries and illnesses occurring in the U.S. worker population to the amount of physical output from U.S. industries; they represent workplace hazards and exposures and are compatible with the life cycle inventory (LCI) structure common to process‐based LCA. A proof of concept demonstrates application of the WE‐CFs in an LCA of municipal solid waste landfill and incineration systems. Results from the proof of concept indicate that estimates of DALYs attributable to the work environment are comparable in magnitude to DALYs attributable to environmental emissions. Construction and infrastructure‐related work processes contributed the most to the work environment DALYs. A sensitivity analysis revealed that uncertainty in the physical output from industries had the most effect on the WE‐CFs. The results encourage implementation of WE‐CFs in future LCA studies, additional refinement of LCI processes to accurately capture industry outputs, and inclusion of infrastructure‐related processes in LCAs that evaluate OSH impacts.

Live and Let Die? Life Cycle Human Health Impacts from the Use of Tire Studs

“…Scanlon et al [40] provide work environment characterization factors (WE-CFs) based on U.S. industrial safety and health data, as well as related quantities of industrial outputs. These WE-CFs can be used to calculate the occupational human health impacts of an industrial activity by multiplying physical data, represented by LCI data, with the corresponding WE-CF, according to the following:${\mathit{DALY}}_{\mathit{prod} \mathit{acc}}={140\%true\sum }_n{m}_n\times {\mathit{WE-CF}}_n,$ where $m_n$ is the physical data associated with industrial activity n (e.g., kg output) and ${\mathrm{italicWE-CF}}_n$ is the work environment characterization factor for n (e.g., DALY/kg output).…”

“…These WE-CFs can be used to calculate the occupational human health impacts of an industrial activity by multiplying physical data, represented by LCI data, with the corresponding WE-CF, according to the following:${\mathit{DALY}}_{\mathit{prod} \mathit{acc}}={140\%true\sum }_n{m}_n\times {\mathit{WE-CF}}_n,$ where $m_n$ is the physical data associated with industrial activity n (e.g., kg output) and ${\mathrm{italicWE-CF}}_n$ is the work environment characterization factor for n (e.g., DALY/kg output). The WE-CFs from the authors of [40] were considered to adequately represent the typical non-Chinese production of WC-Co [37] and aluminum production. Unfortunately, the lack of inclusion of these WE-CFs in the existing LCA databases makes it difficult to be as comprehensive regarding the production system accidents as for the production system emissions.…”

“…Therefore, using the same approach as the authors of [40], a new WE-CF was derived for the sub-process of artisanal cobalt mining (${\mathrm{italicWE-CF}}_{\mathrm{italicCo}}$), according to the following:${\mathit{WE-CF}}_{\mathit{Co}}=\frac{{\mathit{DALY}}_{\mathit{miner}, \mathit{fatal} \mathit{acc}}+{\mathit{DALY}}_{\mathit{miner}, \mathit{acc}}}{m_{\mathit{Co}, \mathit{DRC}}},$ ${\mathit{DALY}}_{\mathit{miner}, \mathit{fatal} \mathit{acc}}=N_{\mathit{miners}}\times S_{\mathit{fatal} \mathit{acc}}\times {(\mathit{LEX}}_{\mathit{DRC}}-L),$ ${\mathit{DALY}}_{\mathit{miner}, \mathit{acc}}=N_{\mathit{miners}}\times N_{\mathit{acc} \mathit{per} \mathit{person}}\times \underset{k}{140\%true\sum }{S}_{\mathit{acc}, k}\times {\mathit{DW}}_k\times L_k,$ where ${\mathrm{italicDALY}}_{\mathrm{italicminer}, \mathrm{italicfatal} \mathrm{italicacc}}$ is the number of DALY lost annually in fatal accidents in the DRC due to cobalt mining (year), ${\mathrm{italicDALY}}_{\mathrm{italicminer}, \mathrm{italicacc}}$ is the number of DALY lost annually in non-fatal accidents in the DRC due to cobalt mining (year), $m_{\mathrm{italicCo}, \mathrm{italicDRC}}$ is the amount of cobalt mined in the DRC per year (kg/year), $N_{\mathrm{italicminers}}$ is the numbers of miners involved in cobalt mining in the DRC (–), $S_{\mathrm{italicfatal} \mathrm{italicacc}}$ is the share of fatal accidents of miners involved (–)...…”

Life Cycle Impact Assessment

“…Chemical intake in each sector can be assessed by multiplying the number of hours worked by measured concentrations (Kijko et al 2013). For accidents at workplace, Scanlon et al (2013Scanlon et al ( , 2014 directly relate accident and health statistics in a sector to corresponding numbers of DALY, yielding DALYs per unit physical output of each sector. • Pesticide residues in food crops can be assessed using a dynamic model to determine the intake fraction, since dynamics of pesticides in the cropenvironment system and resulting residues in harvested crop parts depend on the time lag between application of the pesticide and harvest of the crop (Fantke et al 2011a(Fantke et al , b, 2012a.…”

The Social and Solidarity Economy: Why Is It Relevant to Industrial Ecology?

“…Rather, inputs and outputs are described and can be quantifi ed and qualifi ed across the production-consumption chain, from extraction of natural resources, through manufacturing, distribution, usage and fi nal disposal. In more recent years, social LCA has developed to consider the social impacts in the life cycle of products and processes (UNEP 2009 ;Andrews et al 2009 ;Hauschild et al 2008 ), with more recent work in developing a social hotspots database that includes a consideration of labour intensity and worker rights (Benoit-Norris et al 2012 ) and on integrating occupational health and safety standards (Scanlon et al 2015 ). One aspect of the social and solidarity economy is that the primacy of people over profi t is not an 'end of pipe' gesture, but rather embedded across the economic activity in question, from its guiding principles and mission, to how salaries and employee benefi ts are organized, to how profi t is shared.…”