scholarly journals Human Health Damage Modelling in Life Cycle Assessment: A Valuable Addition to the Evaluation of Medical Interventions?

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. A731
Author(s):  
S Debaveye ◽  
W De Soete ◽  
S De Meester ◽  
D Vandijck ◽  
B Heirman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Medical Interventions ◽  
Valuable Addition ◽  
Damage Modelling ◽  
Human Health Damage ◽  
Health Damage

Profile of Sustainability in Additive Manufacturing and Environmental Assessment of a Novel Stereolithography Process

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harsha Malshe ◽  
Hari Nagarajan ◽  
Yayue Pan ◽  
Karl Haapala
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Additive Manufacturing ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Social Perspectives ◽  
Human Health Damage ◽  
Health Damage ◽  
Cradle To Gate ◽  
Human Health Effects ◽  
Damage Types

Additive manufacturing has emerged as an arena that is receiving intense interest from numerous technology domains, traditional and non-traditional manufacturers. With this growing interest, concerns have arisen regarding the relative performance of these novel processes compared to conventional techniques from economic, environmental, and social perspectives. Sustainability-related benefits can be realized through additive manufacturing, and it is often promoted as a sustainable technology. For appropriate future development and application, however, it will be important to understand relative costs, environmental impacts, and human health effects of processes and materials. Prior research addressing sustainability and additive manufacturing is briefly reviewed. A life cycle assessment is then conducted to understand the environmental performance of a novel additive manufacturing process known as fast mask-image-projection based stereolithography (Fast MIP-SL). In Fast MIP-SL, projection light is patterned by a digital micromirror device as a mask image to selectively cure liquid photopolymer resin, and a two-way movement design is adopted to quickly recoat material. The cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment considers the impacts related to the curing of one resin type and the consumption of electricity in the production of parts of various geometries. Using the ReCiPe 2008 method (hierarchist weighting), it is found that damage to resource availability dominates ecosystems and human health damage types for each part assessed.

scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment of Sugar Palm Fiber Reinforced-Sago Biopolymer Composite Takeout Food Container

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (22) ◽  
pp. 7951
Author(s):  
H. N. Salwa ◽  
S. M. Sapuan ◽  
M. T. Mastura ◽  
M. Y. M. Zuhri
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Palm Fiber ◽  
Food Container ◽  
Damage Category ◽  
Human Health Damage ◽  
Sugar Palm Fiber ◽  
Health Damage

In the development of packaging products, the considerations are not limited to the food shelf-life, safety, and practicality, but also environmental sustainability. This paper reports a life cycle assessment (LCA) analysis of a proposed natural fiber-reinforced biopolymer composite takeout food container. The study focuses on the damage assessment of the whole product system, including disposal scenarios of the thermoformed sugar palm fiber (SPF)-reinforced sago starch composite takeout food container. The analysis performed was to anticipate the environmental impact of the cradle-to-grave approach. The results exhibited the total human health damage of 2.63 × 10−5 DALY and ecosystem damage of 9.46 × 10−8 species.year per kg of containers. The main contributor was the carbon dioxide emission from fossil fuel combustion for energy generation that contributed to climate change and caused human health and the ecosystem damages with low-level metrics of 1.3 × 10−5 DALY and 7.39 × 10−8 species.yr per kg of containers, respectively. The most contributed substances in the ‘Particulate matter formation’ impact categories that caused respiratory diseases were from air/nitrogen oxides, air/particulates, <2.5 µm, and air/sulphur dioxide with the metrics of 2.93 × 10−6 DALY, 2.75 × 10−6 DALY, and 1.9 × 10−6 DALY per kg containers, correspondingly. Whereas, for the ‘Agricultural land occupation’, which contributed to ecosystem damage, almost the total contributions came from raw/occupation, forest, intensive with the metric of 1.93 × 10−9 species.yr per kg of containers. Nevertheless, from the results, all impact categories impacted below than 0.0001 DALY for the Human Health damage category and below 0.00001 species.yr for the ecosystem damage category. These results would provide important insights to companies and manufacturers in commercializing the fully biobased takeout food containers.

European characterization factors for human health damage of PM10 and ozone in life cycle impact assessment

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalie van Zelm ◽  
Mark A.J. Huijbregts ◽  
Henri A. den Hollander ◽  
Hans A. van Jaarsveld ◽  
Ferd J. Sauter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Impact Assessment ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Life Cycle Impact Assessment ◽  
Characterization Factors ◽  
Human Health Damage ◽  
Health Damage ◽  
Life Cycle Impact

scholarly journals Assessing the Environmental Performance of Palm Oil Biodiesel Production in Indonesia: A Life Cycle Assessment Approach

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 3248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoyon Wahyono ◽  
Hadiyanto Hadiyanto ◽  
Mochamad Arief Budihardjo ◽  
Joni Safaat Adiansyah
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Palm Oil ◽  
Oil Palm ◽  
Biodiesel Production ◽  
Processing Unit ◽  
Oil Palm Plantation ◽  
Human Health Damage ◽  
Health Damage ◽  
Palm Oil Biodiesel

The production of palm oil biodiesel in Indonesia has the potential to negatively impact the environment if not managed properly. Therefore, we conducted a life cycle assessment (LCA) study on the production of palm oil biodiesel to assess the environmental performance in Indonesia. Using an LCA approach, we analyzed the environmental indicators, including the carbon footprint, as well as the harm to human health, ecosystem diversity, and resource availability in palm oil biodiesel production. The functional unit in this study was 1 ton of biodiesel. The life cycle of palm oil biodiesel production consists of three processing units, namely the oil palm plantation, palm oil production, and biodiesel production. The processing unit with the greatest impact on the environment was found to be the oil palm plantation. The environmental benefits, namely the use of phosphate, contributed 62.30% of the 73.40% environmental benefit of the CO2 uptake from the oil palm plantation processing unit. The total human health damage of the life cycle of palm oil biodiesel production was 0.00563 DALY, while the total ecosystem’s diversity damage was 2.69 × 10−5 species·yr. Finally, we concluded that the oil palm plantation processing unit was the primary contributor of the carbon footprint, human health damage, and ecosystem diversity damage, while the biodiesel production processing unit demonstrated the highest damage to resource availability.

scholarly journals Value Choices in Life Cycle Impact Assessment of Stressors Causing Human Health Damage

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 796-815 ◽  
Author(s):  
An M. De Schryver ◽  
Rosalie van Zelm ◽  
Sebastien Humbert ◽  
Stephan Pfister ◽  
Thomas E. McKone ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Impact Assessment ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Life Cycle Impact Assessment ◽  
Human Health Damage ◽  
Value Choices ◽  
Health Damage ◽  
Life Cycle Impact

scholarly journals Exploring sustainability potentials in vineyards through LCA? Evidence from farming practices in South Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Russo ◽  
A. E. Strever ◽  
H. J. Ponstein
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Human Health ◽  
South African ◽  
Wine Grape ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Farming Practices ◽  
Manual Labour ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Purpose Following the urgency to curb environmental impacts across all sectors globally, this is the first life cycle assessment of different wine grape farming practices suitable for commercial conventional production in South Africa, aiming at better understanding the potentials to reduce adverse effects on the environment and on human health. Methods An attributional life cycle assessment was conducted on eight different scenarios that reduce the inputs of herbicides and insecticides compared against a business as usual (BAU) scenario. We assess several impact categories based on ReCiPe, namely global warming potential, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, terrestrial toxicity, freshwater toxicity, marine toxicity, human carcinogenic toxicity and human non-carcinogenic toxicity, human health and ecosystems. A water footprint assessment based on the AWARE method accounts for potential impacts within the watershed. Results and discussion Results show that in our impact assessment, more sustainable farming practices do not always outperform the BAU scenario, which relies on synthetic fertiliser and agrochemicals. As a main trend, most of the impact categories were dominated by energy requirements of wine grape production in an irrigated vineyard, namely the usage of electricity for irrigation pumps and diesel for agricultural machinery. The most favourable scenario across the impact categories provided a low diesel usage, strongly reduced herbicides and the absence of insecticides as it applied cover crops and an integrated pest management. Pesticides and heavy metals contained in agrochemicals are the main contributors to emissions to soil that affected the toxicity categories and impose a risk on human health, which is particularly relevant for the manual labour-intensive South African wine sector. However, we suggest that impacts of agrochemicals on human health and the environment are undervalued in the assessment. The 70% reduction of toxic agrochemicals such as Glyphosate and Paraquat and the 100% reduction of Chlorpyriphos in vineyards hardly affected the model results for human and ecotoxicity. Our concerns are magnified by the fact that manual labour plays a substantial role in South African vineyards, increasing the exposure of humans to these toxic chemicals at their workplace. Conclusions A more sustainable wine grape production is possible when shifting to integrated grape production practices that reduce the inputs of agrochemicals. Further, improved water and related electricity management through drip irrigation, deficit irrigation and photovoltaic-powered irrigation is recommendable, relieving stress on local water bodies, enhancing drought-preparedness planning and curbing CO2 emissions embodied in products.

scholarly journals Assessing local impacts of water use on human health: evaluation of water footprint models in the Province Punjab, Pakistan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Mikosch ◽  
Markus Berger ◽  
Elena Huber ◽  
Matthias Finkbeiner
Keyword(s):  
Human Health ◽  
Water Use ◽  
Water Deprivation ◽  
Water Footprint ◽  
Local Scale ◽  
Water Supply Systems ◽  
Domestic Water ◽  
Income Loss ◽  
Human Health Damage ◽  
Health Damage

Abstract Purpose The water footprint (WF) method is widely applied to quantify water use along the life cycle of products and organizations and to evaluate the resulting impacts on human health. This study analyzes the cause-effect chains for the human health damage related to the water use on a local scale in the Province Punjab of Pakistan, evaluates their consistency with existing WF models, and provides recommendations for future model development. Method Locally occurring cause-effect chains are analyzed based on site observations in Punjab and a literature review. Then, existing WF models are compared to the findings in the study area including their comprehensiveness (covered cause-effect chains), relevance (contribution of the modeled cause-effect chain to the total health damage), and representativeness (correspondence with the local cause-effect chain). Finally, recommendations for the development of new characterization models describing the local cause-effect chains are provided. Results and discussion The cause-effect chains for the agricultural water deprivation include malnutrition due to reduced food availability and income loss as well as diseases resulting from the use of wastewater for irrigation, out of which only the first one is addressed by existing WF models. The cause-effect chain for the infectious diseases due to domestic water deprivation is associated primarily with the absence of water supply systems, while the linkage to the water consumption of a product system was not identified. The cause-effect chains related to the water pollution include the exposure via agricultural products, fish, and drinking water, all of which are reflected in existing impact assessment models. Including the groundwater compartment may increase the relevance of the model for the study area. Conclusions Most cause-effect chains identified on the local scale are consistent with existing WF models. Modeling currently missing cause-effect chains for the impacts related to the income loss and wastewater usage for irrigation can enhance the assessment of the human health damage in water footprinting.

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