System Approach for Characterizing and Evaluating Factors for Occupational Health Impacts Due to Nonfatal Injuries and Illnesses for the Use in Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

Occupational injuries and illnesses are major risk factors for human health impacts worldwide, but they have not been consistently nor comprehensively considered in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods. In this study, we quantified occupational health impacts as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for nonfatal injuries and illnesses in all US industries. We further applied an economic input–output model of the US economy to develop a new data set of characterization factors (CFs) that links direct and indirect occupational health impacts to product life cycle final demand. We found that the CF data set varies significantly by industry, ranging from 6.1 to 298 DALYs per billion dollars. About 20% of final demand in the US economic system contributes nearly 50% of the total impacts of occupational health, suggesting occupational health impacts are concentrated in a small portion of industries. To verify the feasibility of the CFs and demonstrate their importance, we included a case of an office chair. The occupational health impacts caused by nonfatal injuries and illnesses during the production of an office chair are of the same order of magnitude as those caused by chemical emissions across the chair’s life cycle, with 1.1 × 10–5 and 1.4 × 10–5 DALYs per chair, respectively. Results and data sets derived from this study support the integration of occupational health impacts with LCIA methods.