Zero Pollution publications

n life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), assessing human and freshwater toxicity impacts is particularly challenging. The Environmental Footprint (EF) LCIA method, recommended by the European Commission, results from an effort to address known limitations of available impact assessment models and to enhance transparency of input data.

Purpose. The EU Environmental Footprint (EF) is a life cycle assessment – based method which aims at assessing the environmental impacts of products and organizations through 16 midpoint impact categories, among which three address toxicity-related impacts. This paper presents the principles underpinning the calculation of the set of Characterisation Factors (CFs) for the toxicity-related impact categories in the EF version 3.0: freshwater ecotoxicity (ECOTOX), human toxicity – cancer (HTOX_c) and human toxicity – non-cancer (HTOX_nc). Methods. In order to respond to the issues emerged during the EF pilot phase, the input data and the calculation principles of the USEtox® model were updated. In particular: (i) Robustness Factors (RFs) were introduced to reduce the dominance of metals and to balance the inappropriate modelling of non-organic compounds in USEtox®; (ii) high quality data were selected from databases of EU agencies (European Chemicals Agency and European Food Safety Authority) to guarantee the reliability of input data; and (iii) a new approach based on HC20 (Hazard Concentration killing 20% of the exposed population) was implemented to derive freshwater ecotoxicity Effect Factors (EfF). Results and discussion.

The EU Commission published in 2013 a recommendation on the use of a common method to measure and communicate the life cycle environmental performance of products and organizations. In November 2013, started a four years pilot exercise with industries, NGOs, and academia to assess the effectiveness of the method on 25 product categories.

The European Union Environmental Footprint (EU‐EF) is a harmonized method to measure and communicate the life cycle environmental performance of products and organizations. Among 16 different impact categories included in the EU‐EF, 1 focuses on the impact of substances on freshwater ecosystems and requires the use of toxicity data.

The EU Commission Ecolabel and the Product and Environmental Footprint (PEF) aim at promoting the development and consumption of greener products. The product aquatic toxicity score from these 2 methods may lead in some circumstances to opposite conclusions.

The scientific consensus model USEtox® is developed since 2003 under the auspices of the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative as a harmonized approach for characterizing (eco-) toxicity in life cycle assessment (LCA) and other comparative assessment frameworks.

The scientific consensus model USEtox® is recommended by the European Commission as the reference model to characterize life cycle chemical emissions in terms of their potential human toxicity and freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity impacts in the context of the International Reference Life Cycle Data System Handbook and the Environmental Footprint pilot phase looking at products (PEF) and organizations (OEF).