Page 304 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

288 4 Life Cycle Impact Assessment

Table 4.16 Health damage in DALYs per 1000 km.

Motor vehicle Motor vehicle type 2
type 1 (passenger (truck, etc.)
car, etc.) DALY (a) DALY (a)

Communication disturbance (during the day) 0.00013 0.0013
Sleep disturbance (at night) 0.0027 0.026

Simplified, the number of disturbed human hours can be calculated for one
passenger kilometre (pkm) or (metric) tonne-kilometre (tkm) as follows:

1tkm ≈ 1pkm ≈ 7 × 10 –4 (disturbed human hours)
For these factors to be suitable for a generalisation in future, average resident
densities have to be determined and integrated into the calculations. Besides, point
sources and rail transports should be integrated.
Whereas Lafleche and Sacchetto (1997, loc. cit.) regard noise as a mere nui-
sance, M¨ uller-Wenk 350) advocates a quantitative relationship between street traffic
noise and health damages which mainly comprises sleep and communication
disturbances. The calculations or respective estimations were accomplished for
1000 additional vehicle kilometres (car and truck) on the Swiss road system and
therefore includes overland traffic as well as traffic within townships. The year of
reference was 1995. The evaluation was done according to the DALY method 351) and
was supplemented by the interviews with experts. The results for the damaging
impacts ‘communication disturbance’ (during daytime) and ‘sleeping disturbance’
(during night) are presented in Table 4.16 in DALY per 1000 km. For a conversion
into common LCA specifications as passenger kilometre (car) and tonne-kilometre
(truck) per fU, further assumptions are necessary. The figures are valid for Switzer-
land and can be used for other countries of average noise load. The authors
recommend a division by 2 for countries with a minor noise load (in Europe, e.g.
Finland, Denmark and Sweden) and a multiplication with 2 for countries with a
major noise load (in Europe, e.g. Spain and Slovakia).
For the evaluation, assumptions of countries concerned have to be made and
information on whether transports occur during the day or at night has to be
obtained. Transport by rail has not yet been considered in the analysis. In view of
the broader grid structure only a smaller fraction of the population is concerned.
M¨ uller-Wenk (2004) outlines how to analyse rail traffic similar to road traffic. An
assignment to flight-kilometre is problematic as noise only occurs for starting
and landing of air planes near the air port. Especially for comparative LCAs these
restrictions must be kept in mind in the case where transport systems differ
qualitatively (e.g. truck vs. rail).

350) M¨ uller-Wenk (1999a, 2002b, 2004)
351) WHO (1996) and Hofstetter (1998); Disability Adjusted lost Life Years, see Section 4.5.3.2.4.