Review of Environmental Assessment Case Studies Blending Elements of Risk Assessment and Life Cycle Assessment

Harder, Robin; Holmquist, Hanna; Molander, Sverker; Svanström, Magdalena; Peters, Gregory

doi:10.1021/acs.est.5b03302

Cited by 58 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…The relationship between risk assessment and LCA has been discussed extensively in the development of LCA impact categories, mainly in the field of toxicity, described in a recent review by Harder et al . (). Linking ERA and LCA of fisheries is an area that needs further research. Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) is a set of methods used to design and evaluate fishery management strategies that are robust to uncertainty (Smith et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Expanding the concept of sustainable seafood using Life Cycle Assessment

Ziegler¹,

Hornborg²,

Green

et al. 2016

Fish and Fisheries

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Fisheries management and sustainability assessment of fisheries more generally have recently expanded their scope from single‐species stock assessment to ecosystem‐based approaches, aiming to incorporate economic, social and local environmental impacts, while still excluding global‐scale environmental impacts. In parallel, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has emerged as a widely used and recommended framework to assess environmental impacts of products, including global‐scale impacts. For over a decade, LCA has been applied to seafood supply chains, leading to new insights into the environmental impact of seafood products. We present insights from seafood LCA research with particular focus on evaluating fisheries management, which strongly influences the environmental impact of seafood products. Further, we suggest tangible ways in which LCA could be taken up in management. By identifying trade‐offs, LCA can be a useful decision support tool and avoids problem shifting from one concern (or activity) to another. The integrated, product‐based and quantitative perspective brought by LCA could complement existing tools. One example is to follow up fuel use of fishing, as the production and combustion of fuel used dominates overall results for various types of environmental impacts of seafood products, and is also often linked to biological impacts of fishing. Reducing the fuel use of fisheries is therefore effective to reduce overall impacts. Allocating fishing rights based on environmental performance could likewise facilitate the transition to low‐impact fisheries. Taking these steps in an open dialogue between fishers, managers, industry, NGOs and consumers would enable more targeted progress towards sustainable fisheries.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Expanding the concept of sustainable seafood using Life Cycle Assessment

Ziegler¹,

Hornborg²,

Green

et al. 2016

Fish and Fisheries

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“…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).…”

Section: Previous Work Evaluating the Human Health Impact Of Far-fielmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Tian

Bilec

2018

Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association

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It has become increasingly important for environmental managers to evaluate the human health (HH) impact of chemicals in their supply chain. Current life cycle assessment (LCA) methods are limited because they often only address the HH impact at large geographical scales. This paper aims to develop a method that derives a regionalized life cycle inventory data set and site-specific air dispersion modeling to evaluate the HH impact of chemicals along the life cycle phases at finer geographical scales to improve decision-making, with focus on inhalation pathway. More specifically, cancer risk and noncancer hazard index (HI) are quantified at the county level to identify high-risk regions and at the census tract level to reveal the geographical pattern of health impacts. The results showed that along the cradle-to-gate life cycle stages of a widely used chemical, methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI), the accumulative inhalation risk was 3 orders of magnitude below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) risk management thresholds for both cancer risk (2.16 × 10) and noncancer HI (1.53 × 10). However, the absolute value of inhalation risks caused by the case study chemicals varied significantly in different geographical areas, up to 4 orders of magnitude. This paper demonstrates a feasible approach to improve human health impact assessment (HHIA) by combining site-specific air dispersion modeling and LCA using publicly available inventory data. This proposed method complements existing life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) models to improve HHIA by employing both HH risk assessment and LCA techniques. One potential outcome is to prioritize pollution prevention and risk reduction measures based on the risk maps derived from this method. Implications: It has become increasingly important for environmental managers to evaluate the human health impacts of chemicals in their supply chain. Regionalized life cycle inventory data sets should be developed using publically available databases such as EPA's toxic release inventory. The combination of site-specific dispersion modeling and life cycle assessment modeling can improve human health impact assessment of chemicals by providing more regionalized results along their supply chain.

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“…Use of hydrologic data amplifies these uncertainties because these data introduce natural variability and, thus, additional uncertainty that cannot be reduced by more measurements. Apart from uncertainties caused by data, an incomplete or biased model structure also propagates uncertainties into outputs [26]. Reported LCA results may be misleading if potential sources of uncertainty are not addressed, especially in the case of comparing design alternatives for decision-making [27,28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reported LCA results may be misleading if potential sources of uncertainty are not addressed, especially in the case of comparing design alternatives for decision-making [27,28]. Identifying major sources of uncertainties with relative impacts on the final LCA results is indispensable [26,[29][30][31] for effective application of hydrologic analysis and LCA for a sustainable, watershed-scale design of urban drainage systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining Hydrologic Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment Approaches to Evaluate Sustainability of Water Infrastructure: Uncertainty Analysis

Tavakol-Davani

Rahimi

Burian

et al. 2019

Water

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The goal of this research is identifying major sources of uncertainty of an environmentally-sustainable urban drainage infrastructure design, based on hydrologic analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA). The uncertainty analysis intends to characterize and compare relative roles of unreliability, incompleteness, technological difference, and spatial and temporal variation in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) data, as well as natural variability in hydrologic data. Uncertainties are analyzed using a robust Monte Carlo simulation approach, performed by High Throughput Computing (HTC) and interpreted by Morse-Scale regression models. The uncertainty analysis platform is applied to a watershed-scale LCA of rainwater harvesting systems (RWH) to control combined sewer overflows (CSOs). To consider the watershed-scale implications, RWH is simulated to serve for both the water supply and CSO control in an urban watershed in Toledo, Ohio, USA. Results suggest that, among the studied parameters, rainfall depth (as a hydrologic parameter) caused more than 86% of the uncertainty, while only 7% of the uncertainty was caused by LCIA parameters. Such an emphasis on the necessity of robust hydrologic data and associated analyses increase the reliability of LCA-based urban water infrastructure design. In addition, results suggest that such a topology-inspired model is capable of rendering an optimal RWH system capacity as a function of annual rainfall depth. Specifically, if the system could capture 1/40th of annual rainfall depth in each event from rooftops, the RWH system would be optimal and, thus, lead to minimized life cycle impacts in terms of global warming potential (GWP) and aquatic eco-toxicity (ETW). This capture depth would be around 2.1 cm for Toledo (given an 85 cm/year rainfall and 200 m2 typical roof area), which could be achieved through an RWH system with 4.25 m3 capacity per household, assuming a uniform plan for the entire studied watershed. Capacities smaller than this suggested optimal value would likely result in loss of RWH potable water treatment savings and CSO control benefits, while capacities larger than the optimal would likely incur an excessive wastewater treatment burden and construction phase impacts of RWH systems.

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Review of Environmental Assessment Case Studies Blending Elements of Risk Assessment and Life Cycle Assessment

Cited by 58 publications

References 83 publications

Expanding the concept of sustainable seafood using Life Cycle Assessment

Expanding the concept of sustainable seafood using Life Cycle Assessment

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

Combining Hydrologic Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment Approaches to Evaluate Sustainability of Water Infrastructure: Uncertainty Analysis

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