Indoor Air Pollutant Exposure for Life Cycle Assessment: Regional Health Impact Factors for Households

Abstract

Human exposure to indoor pollutant concentrations is receiving increasing interest in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). We address this issue by incorporating an indoor compartment into the USEtox model, as well as by providing recommended parameter values for households in four different regions of the world differing geographically, economically, and socially. With these parameter values, intake fractions and comparative toxicity potentials for indoor emissions of dwellings for different air tightness levels were calculated. The resulting intake fractions for indoor exposure vary by 2 orders of magnitude, due to the variability of ventilation rate, building occupation, and volume. To compare health impacts as a result of indoor exposure with those from outdoor exposure, the indoor exposure characterization factors determined with the modified USEtox model were applied in a case study on cooking in non-OECD countries. This study demonstrates the appropriateness and significance of integrating indoor environments into LCA, which ensures a more holistic account of all exposure environments and allows for a better accountability of health impacts. The model, intake fractions, and characterization factors are made available for use in standard LCA studies via www.usetox.org and in standard LCA software.

Modeling human health characterization factors for indoor nanomaterial emissions in life cycle assessment: a case-study of titanium dioxide

“…A dynamic LCIA model is presented for calculating the human health impacts from occupational, indoor air emissions of metal oxide nanoparticles, with a focus on nano-TiO 2 . Specifically, a CF (eqn (1)) for use in LCA is defined as follows: 39,40 CF i,j = iF i,j •EF i (1) The CF is based on the concept proposed in USEtox 39,41 for calculating the human health life cycle impacts resulting from the emission of a substance (i) in a specific exposure scenario (j), given its intake fraction (iF) and its effect factor (EF). The iF represents the ratio of the mass of substance to which one is exposed per mass of the total emitted substance.…”

Integrating site-specific dispersion modeling into life cycle assessment, with a focus on inhalation risks in chemical production

“…The site-specific impact assessment was then conducted for the selected chemicals. More recently, LCA and RA have been used together to study indoor chemical exposures (Hellweg et al 2009;Rosenbaum et al 2015;Walser et al 2014). These studies have been thoroughly discussed by Harder and colleagues (Harder et al 2015).…”

Multi-pathway exposure modeling of chemicals in cosmetics with application to shampoo

“…The volatile compounds within the case study (benzyl benzoate, isopropyl alcohol) do not have ozone or nitrate degradation rates available to our knowledge (US EPA, 2012, Wenger et al, 2012) and sorption to surfaces within the bathroom or shower stall is likely limited (Won et al, 2001). Due to these data gaps removal processes within indoor air were not parameterized within our model but indoor degradation is unlikely to increase the removal rate by more than 20% (Rosenbaum et al, 2015) which could have an effect for chemicals with high inhalation.…”