Comparison of Different Life-Cycle Impact Assessment Methods for Aquatic Ecotoxicity

Abstract

Human and ecotoxicity impact categories are problematic to quantify within life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) because their local scope makes them difficult to aggregate with the traditional global-impact categories used in life-cycle assessment (LCA). For being able to assess local impacts such as toxicity, LCIA developers increasingly include fate modeling into LCA. This article follows this development by comparing different LCIA methods for aquatic ecotoxicology and by investigating the importance of fate within LCIA, the necessity of considering freshwater and seawater compartments separately, and the key degradation and intermedia transfer processes involved. The methods are compared by assessing an example study of domestic clothes washing in former West Germany. Four LCIA methods are selected and applied to four substances emitted during the washing process. The conclusion is that the consideration of environmental fate does matter and that aquatic ecotoxic impacts can differ significantly for the same substance in freshwater and in marine ecosystems. The way (bio)degradation, photolysis, volatilization, and transfer from agricultural soils are considered plays an important role as do the system boundaries chosen. This means that the LCIA methodology should remain flexible so that appropriate methods can be chosen for different applications. Fate models being developed in the environmental risk assessment of chemicals can contribute to the further improvement of LCIA methods.

Implications of choices and interpretation in LCA for multi-criteria process design: de-inked pulp capacity and cogeneration at a paper mill case study

“…It was shown by some authors that the selection of an appropriate boundary is essential in revealing the difference between compared alternatives [11][12][13][14]. Also, some publications comparing the application of different life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods to the same case study are available in the literature [15][16][17][18][19].…”

Environmental Impact of Modern Wind Power under LCA Methodology

“…Finally, another aspect to consider when analysing the environmental impacts by using LCA methodology is the choice of the method used. This chosen method is rarely discussed, and although there exist several works discussing the topic (Schulze et al, 2001;Brent & Hietkamp, 2003;Dreyer et al, 2003;Pant et al, 2004;Bovea & Gallardo, 2006;Renou et al, 2008;Hung & Ma, 2009), usually they focus on specific case studies, and no one is focused on the specific case of renewable energy. Hence it is legitimate to ask whether the LCA results may be influenced by the choice of the LCIA method, between all the scientifically sound methods.…”

Pesticide ecotoxicological effect factors and their uncertainties for freshwater ecosystems

“…A fate and an effect analysis step are needed to obtain characterization factors (Margni et al 2002;Rosenbaum et al 2007;Schulze et al 2001). The fate factor describes the change in environmental concentration per unit of emission.…”