Page 214 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

200 R.K. Rosenbaum et al.

methodology of LCA. Footprints have the ability to raise environmental awareness
and therefore are springboards towards the use of more-encompassing assessment
tools such as LCA. They can constitute a first step for organisations or companies,
who can already implement procedures as a preparation for full environmental
assessments. However, due to a footprint’s narrow scope and limited representa-
tiveness for a comprehensive set of environmental indicators, they are not suitable
for decision-support of any kind including product labels, ecodesign, policy-support
and the like.

10.5 Detailed Description of Impact Categories Currently
Assessed in LCA

The following sections document how the most commonly considered environ-
mental problems (i.e. impact categories) are handled in life cycle impact assess-
ment. Ionising radiation is also a commonly addressed impact category in LCA, but
was not included in the detailed overview here due to its specificity to a limited
number of processes in the LCI. The impact categories are dealt with in sequence
going from global over regional towards local and addressing first the
emission-related and then the extraction-related categories. The common structure
of the sections is:
• What is the problem?
• What is the underlying environmental mechanism and how is it modelled in
LCIA?
• What are the human activities and elementary flows contributing most to the
problem? (emission-based categories only)
• What are the most widely used, existing LCIA characterisation models?
Beyond the classic list of impact categories discussed hereafter, there is a
number of emerging categories currently in the stage of research and development.
Though potentially relevant they have not yet reached sufficient methodological
maturity to be operational for the majority of practitioners and no or only few LCIA
methods have included them in their indicator set. Some examples are:
• Biotic resources such as fish or wood
• Noise
• Pathogens
• Salinization
• Accidents
• Impacts of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)
A profound comparison of existing LCIA methods was performed by Hauschild
et al. (2013) for the establishment of recommended LCIA models for the European
context. Taking Hauschild et al.’s work as a starting point, the tables in Chap. 40