Page 61 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Life Cycle Assessment: Principles, Practice and Prospects
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The Australian Year Book (ABS 2004) notes:
particle pollution is a major health concern as it can exacerbate respiratory and
cardiovascular illnesses, including bronchitis, pneumonia and asthma, leading to
increased hospital admissions (Atech 2001). Particles have also been linked to the
deaths of up to 2400 people a year in Australia, carrying an associated cost of
$17.2b (Environment Australia 2001).

Indoor air quality studies show that our building environments are very similar to those in
other countries. Indoor air pollution is of particular concern as Australians spend up to 90%
of their time inside (ABS 1997). While specific data on health consequences from indoor air
pollution is not available in Australia, evidence from other countries shows this to be a signifi-
cant impact and one that LCA should take into account.
LCA work by Grant and Beer (2000) on alternative transport fuels initially found signifi-
cant impacts from particles, although many of these were from on-farm impacts and are there-
fore not clearly relevant as contributors to urban air pollution. In subsequent analysis (Beer et
al. 2001), a distinction was made between non-urban pollutants, others containing those
known to be in urban areas, and those for which no location information was known. A similar
approach was taken by Ross and Evans (2003). The problem of tracking site-specific data is
being resolved with the recent inclusion of subcompartment specification in the international
standards report on data documentation (ISO 2001). This allows for air emissions to be further
broken down into urban, non-urban, indoor, stratospheric, tropospheric categories, and so on.
While the international standard does not contain a definitive list of subcompartments, the
practice in the ecoinvent database (Frischknecht and Jungbluth 2004), and implementation of
this in LCA software, has settled on five subcompartments in both water and air, which include
urban and non-urban separation. Although this information is available, it is only of use if
background databases utilise this feature and collection of data includes this subcompartment
specification where it is required.

5.6 Conclusions
Two key issues arise out of the uniqueness of Australia as a place to conduct LCA. First, the use
of international data is fraught and should be undertaken with special caution. Second, there
are unanswered questions about the implications for any weighting of impacts.
Regarding the first issue, because the Australian environment is unique and deserves
special attention in LCA, it raises problems for impact assessment for particular impact types.
Australia’s distinctive ecosystems and biodiversity determinants require special care in trans-
lating impact assessment models developed in Europe or North America. (See Chapter 8 for
further discussion of Eco-indicator sets for Australia.) On a positive note, since Australian
people are similar to other populations, the model used for human health impacts in Australia
can use existing models modified for local climatic and population dynamics. Similarly, global
impacts are characterised by the source of the emissions being irrelevant, at least in terms of
geography. These impacts include global warming, ozone depletion and climate change. There
is no specific reason to modify these impact models to Australia, as the current models incor-
porate all global impacts including those in Australia.
Regarding the second issue, notwithstanding that some impact factors can be translated
into other factors in LCA, the method requires proper assessment of a large enough range of
impacts if the result is to reflect a sustainability measure. This will reduce the potential for
burden shifting. It occurs, for example, where global climate change impacts are counted, but
not biodiversity impacts; therefore, decisions are made that are detrimental to biodiversity on

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