Page 255 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

10 Life Cycle Impact Assessment 241

10.13 Particulate Matter Formation

In existing LCIA methods, health impacts from exposure to particulate matter
(PM) as impact category is referred to by different terms (e.g. ‘particulate
matter/respiratory inorganics’ in ILCD, ‘respiratory effects’ in IMPACT 2002+,
‘human health criteria pollutants’ in TRACI, or ‘particulate matter formation’ in
ReCiPe). Although causing mainly toxicity-related health effects, exposure to PM is
considered a separate impact category in most LCIA methods. This is mainly due to
a number of important differences between the characterisation of PM formation and
that of human toxicity. These differences include the complex atmospheric chemistry
involved in the formation of secondary PM from different precursor substances
which requires a different fate model. Furthermore, different emission heights are
important to consider, global monitoring data for PM air concentrations are used,
and the effect assessment is based on exposure-response functions mostly derived
from epidemiological evidence, which is not possible for most toxic chemicals due
to missing emission locations and exposure- or dose-response information.

10.13.1 Problem

A large number of studies including the global burden of disease (GBD) study
series consider particulate matter (PM) to be a leading environmental stressor
contributing to global human disease burden (i.e. all diseases around the world) via
occupational and household indoor exposure as well as urban and rural outdoor
(ambient) exposures. In 2013, outdoor PM pollution accounted for 2.9 million
deaths and 70 million DALY, and household PM pollution from solid fuels
accounted for 2.9 million deaths and 81 million DALY (Forouzanfar et al. 2015).
With that, outdoor and household PM pollution combined contributed in 2013 with
71% to premature deaths attributable to all environmental risk factors and with 19%
to premature death attributable to all risk factors (i.e. including behavioural etc.).
This means that exposure to PM accounts on average for 1 out of 5 premature
deaths worldwide. Thereby, exposure to PM is associated in epidemiological and
toxicological studies with various adverse health effects and reduction in life
expectancy including chronic and acute respiratory and cardiovascular diseases,
chronic and acute mortality, lung cancer, diabetes and adverse birth outcomes
(Fantke et al. 2015).
PM can be distinguished according to formation type (primary and secondary)
and according to aerodynamic diameter (respirable, coarse, fine and ultrafine).
Primary PM refers to particles that are directly emitted, e.g. from road transport,
power plants or farming activities. Secondary PM refers to organic and inorganic
particles formed through reactions of precursor substances including nitrogen
oxides (NO x ), sulphur oxides (SO x ), ammonia (NH 3 ), semivolatile and volatile
organic compounds (VOC). Secondary particles include sulphate, nitrate and