Toolbox: Life cycle based assessments
A life cycle based assessment toolbox is being developed to support the assessment of sustainability of chemicals. It is based on existing models already used in life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the toxicity and ecotoxicity of chemicals, while taking into account advances in digitalization methods.
Substituting hazardous chemicals in industrial processes and consumer products requires not only the selection of less hazardous alternatives, but also ensuring that the substitution does not lead to unacceptable trade-offs elsewhere in the chemical or product life cycle. Similarly, applying a systems perspective to process design and optimization is essential to avoid shifting the burden from one potential health and environmental impact to another.
Robust methods and tools are needed to address these challenges. Life cycle based tools need to take into account the hazardous properties of chemicals and materials as well as the risks of exposure throughout the life cycle.
The focus lies on the toxicity related impacts by inclusion of "chemical footprints" (herein defined as an aggregated indicator of chemical pollution that enables the assessment of the potential human toxicity and ecotoxicity impacts of the entire life cycle of a product or service).
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