Abstract
PurposeLife cycle assessments (LCAs) of textile products which do not include the use and emission of textile chemicals, such as dyes, softeners and water-repellent agents, will give non-comprehensive results for the toxicity impact potential. The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to provide a set of characterisation factors (CFs) for some of the most common textile chemicals and (2) to propose a data source selection strategy in order to increase transparency when calculating new CFs.MethodsA set of 72 common textile-related substances was matched with the USEtox 2.01, USEtox 1.01 and the COSMEDE databases in order to investigate coverage and coherence. For the 25 chemicals that did not already have established CFs in any of these databases, new CFs were calculated. A data source selection strategy was developed and followed in order to ensure consistency and transparency, and USEtox 2.01 was used for calculations. The parameters that caused the most uncertainty were identified during the modelling and strategies for handling them were developed.Results and discussionOf the 72 textile-related substances, 48 already had calculated recommended or indicative CFs in existing databases, which showed good coherence. The main uncertainty identified during the calculation of 25 new CFs was the selection of input data regarding toxicity and degradation in water. However, for substances such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the acid dissociation constant (pKa) and partitioning coefficients (Kow and KOC) also require special considerations. Other input parameters had less than one order of magnitude impact on the CF result for essentially all substances.ConclusionsThe paper presents a strategy for how to provide a complete set of toxicity CFs for a given list of substances. In addition, such a set of CFs for common textile-related substances is presented. The data source selection strategy provides a structured and transparent way of calculating additional CFs for textile chemicals with USEtox. Consequently, this study can help future LCA studies to provide relevant guidance towards environmentally benign chemical management in the textile industry.
Highlights
Responsible editor: Serenella Sala Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.When performing life cycle assessment (LCA), the importance of including potential toxicity impacts of chemicals has been highlighted in several studies (Larsen et al 2009; Laurent et al 2012; Panko and Hitchcock 2011)
Given the necessity to fill as many data gaps as possible for relevant application of toxicity in LCIA, we propose to include estimated data as input when experimental data are missing for fate and exposure factors as well as for effect factors
Regarding the different results for characterisation factors (CFs) in USEtox 1.01 compared with USEtox 2.01, this can be explained by differences in the model
Summary
When performing life cycle assessment (LCA), the importance of including potential toxicity impacts of chemicals has been highlighted in several studies (Larsen et al 2009; Laurent et al 2012; Panko and Hitchcock 2011). Emissions of toxic chemicals from textile production should be a highly relevant environmental aspect to include in LCA studies of textile products. One shortcoming is the lack of characterisation factors (CFs) for textile chemicals. This is crucial, since it is the CF that relates the emission (E) of a substance (i) in the life cycle inventory (LCI) to potential environmental impacts (I) according to the following relationship (Pennington et al 2004):
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