Linking chemical risk information with life cycle assessment in product development

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a prototype model developed for a case study linking chemical risk information with a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to product development. Standard LCA software was used to develop a tool combining LCA and Risk Phrase information for health and environmental hazards encompassed by new European chemicals directives. Real product development cases are used based on Ostfold Research's collaboration with industry – specifically a coatings company. The principal objective of the work was to investigate the degree to which hazardous risk information could be combined with elements of LCA methodology to better inform product development. The work also shows how the tool equips product developers to move beyond the limited insight provided by the pure hazardous risk information approach, to also consider health and environmental hazard aspects in a functional perspective typical of LCA. This allows the identification of differences in product development priorities resulting from the two approaches. Some results from testing the prototype tool are presented and its application in product development within the coatings company and for other companies is discussed. The work presented in this paper falls short of the aim of including the full life cycle perspective, but represents an important first step towards achieving this. The work demonstrates that some integration of hazardous risk and LCA approaches is practicable, and indicates that such integration gives rise to changes in product development priorities. Combining hazardous risk information with LCA is valuable for decision makers, including product designers. The tool presented in this paper makes it possible for decision makers to combine LCA functional unit information with hazardous risk information, enabling designers to reduce a product's hazardous risk.