Bridging the gap between life cycle inventory and impact assessment for toxicological assessments of pesticides used in crop production

Zelm, Rosalie van; Larrey-Lassalle, Pyrène; Roux, Philippe

doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2013.11.037

Cited by 36 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…One important reason is the lack of high-quality inventory data of pesticide use and emissions (Yang and Suh, 2015). When pesticides are included, emission inventories often rely on oversimplified assumptions, are not site-specific, and suffer from methodological inconsistencies (Rosenbaum et al, 2015, van Zelm et al, 2014.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Freshwater ecotoxicity impacts from pesticide use in animal and vegetable foods produced in Sweden

Nordborg

Davis²,

Cederberg

et al. 2017

Science of The Total Environment

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Chemical pesticides are widely used in modern agriculture but their potential negative impacts are seldom considered in environmental assessments of food products. This study aims to assess and compare the potential freshwater ecotoxicity impacts due to pesticide use in the primary production of six food products: chicken fillet, minced pork, minced beef, milk, pea soup, and wheat bread. The assessment is based on a detailed and site-specific inventory of pesticide use in the primary production of the food products, all of which are produced in Sweden. Soybeans, used to produce the animal-based food products, are grown in Brazil. Pesticide emissions to air and surface water were calculated using PestLCI v. 2.0.5. Ecotoxicity impacts were assessed using USEtox v. 2.01, and expressed in relation to five functional units. The results show that the animal-based food products have considerably larger impact potentials than the plant-based food products. In relation to kg pea soup, impact potentials of bread, milk, minced beef, chicken fillet and minced pork are ca. 2, 3, 50, 140 and 170 times larger, respectively. All mass-based functional units yield the same ranking. Notably, chicken fillet and minced pork have larger impacts than minced beef and milk, regardless of functional unit, due to extensive use of pesticides, some with high toxicity, in soybean production. This result stands in sharp contrast to typical carbon footprint and land use results which attribute larger impacts to beef than to chicken and pork. Measures for reducing impacts are discussed. In particular, we show that by substituting soybeans with locally sourced feed crops, the impact potentials of minced pork and chicken fillet are reduced by ca. 70 and 90%, respectively. Brazilian soybean production is heavily reliant on pesticides. We propose that weak legislation, in combination with tropical climate and agronomic practices, explains this situation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Freshwater ecotoxicity impacts from pesticide use in animal and vegetable foods produced in Sweden

Nordborg

Davis²,

Cederberg

et al. 2017

Science of The Total Environment

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show abstract

“…and degradation products (metabolites). BNone of these are covered in current LCIA practice, but can we nevertheless assume the same conditions (van Zelm et al 2014). She outlined the issues that we further and more thoroughly discussed in the meeting.…”

Section: Workhop Resumementioning

confidence: 99%

“…cleaning of equipment), use of buffer zones, and (over)dosing. This work was recently published (van Zelm et al 2014), proposing a framework to bridge the gap and prevent overlaps between LCI and LCIA for toxicological assessments of pesticides.…”

Section: Workhop Resumementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This leads to the core question of considering the field as part of the ecosphere or technosphere, which is also related to different agricultural practices (e.g. organic vs. conventional) and represents a modelling choice that is currently inconsistently handled in LCA practice (Hellweg and Geisler 2003;Birkved and Hauschild 2006;Nemecek and Kägi 2007;Dijkman et al 2012;van Zelm et al 2014). As a consequence, several approaches and hypotheses have been proposed and used up to now, which leads to inconsistent results and may not always represent realistic conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Glasgow consensus on the delineation between pesticide emission inventory and impact assessment for LCA

Rosenbaum

Antón

Bengoa

et al. 2015

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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“…Different approaches can be found in literature to describe the processes from pesticide spraying to emissions in soil, water and air, according to the definition of the boundaries between ecosphere and technosphere for agricultural field and its soil. The boundaries can be set to belong to the ecosphere as in Ecoinvent (Frischknecht et al, 2007), or the technosphere, as in PestLCI 2.0 (Dijkman et al, 2012) or in-between, according to the framework suggested by van Zelm et al (2014). A changing climate will affect crop diseases, weeds and insects and therefore the pesticide use for control.…”

Section: Crop Diseases Weeds and Insectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to manage uncertainty in future Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) scenarios addressing the effect of climate change in crop production

Niero

Ingvordsen

Jørgensen

et al. 2015

Journal of Cleaner Production

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Bridging the gap between life cycle inventory and impact assessment for toxicological assessments of pesticides used in crop production

Cited by 36 publications

References 35 publications

Freshwater ecotoxicity impacts from pesticide use in animal and vegetable foods produced in Sweden

Freshwater ecotoxicity impacts from pesticide use in animal and vegetable foods produced in Sweden

The Glasgow consensus on the delineation between pesticide emission inventory and impact assessment for LCA

How to manage uncertainty in future Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) scenarios addressing the effect of climate change in crop production

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