USEtox Model Research Articles

Assessing freshwater ecotoxicity of agricultural products in life cycle assessment (LCA): a case study of wheat using French agricultural practices databases and USEtox model

Purpose A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted on winter wheat, based on real agricultural practices databases, on a sample divided into four production scenarios. The main objectives of this study are (1) to assess the environmental impact of winter wheat, using an LCA covering field practices, and the transport and storage of grain until it is sold to a miller; (2) to use the USEtox model (Rosenbaum et al. in Int J Life Cycle Assess 13:532–546, 2008) to assess the part of the total freshwater ecotoxicity impact due to pesticide use, its variability among plots, and to identify the active ingredients with the strongest impact; (3) and with the help of fungicide, insecticide, herbicide experts, to identify active ingredients to replace these high-impact pesticides and estimate the effect of such a substitution on total freshwater ecotoxicity.

Spatial differentiation of chemical removal rates from air in life cycle impact assessment

Purpose Spatial differentiation is a topic of increasing interest within life cycle assessment (LCA). For chemical-related impacts, in this paper, we evaluate the relative influence of substance properties and of environmental characteristics on the variability in the environmental fate of chemicals using an advanced, spatially resolved model. The goal of this study is to explore spatial distribution and spatial variability of organic chemicals, assessing the variability of the removal rate from air with a multimedia spatially explicit model Multimedia Assessment of Pollutant Pathways in the Environment (MAPPE) Global with a resolution of 1 × 1°. This provides basis to help identify chemicals for which spatial differentiation will be important in LCAs, including whether differentiation will have added benefits over the use of global generic default values, such as those provided by the USEtox model.

Life cycle human toxicity assessment of pesticides: Comparing fruit and vegetable diets in Switzerland and the United States

Food consumption represents the dominant exposure pathway of the general public to pesticides. In this paper, we characterize the lifelong cumulative human health damage from ingestion of pesticides contained in fruits and vegetables in Switzerland and the United States. We evaluated pesticide residues in 62 151 food samples. Chemical specific concentrations were combined with pesticide emission data and information on country-specific diets and chemical toxicity to assess the human health impacts of 51 food commodities and national average diets. Furthermore, a list of characterization factors for pesticide ingestion via food was calculated for use in life cycle impact assessment. On average, the Swiss population takes in via food ingestion 0.41 g of every 1 kg of pesticide applied during agricultural cultivation. The corresponding value in the United States is 0.51. Intake fractions based on experimental monitoring data were compared with outputs from the USEtox model for life cycle impact assessment of toxic substances. The modeled intake fractions were underestimated by up to two orders of magnitude. However, even when using the monitored residue concentration data, the absolute health damage via fruits and vegetable ingestion was small: The potential lifelong damage of pesticides is estimated to be only 4.2 and 3.2 min of life lost per person in Switzerland and the United States, respectively. The results of this study indicate that pesticide intake due to the ingestion of fruits and vegetables consumed in Switzerland and the United States does not lead to significant human health damages.

USES-LCA 2.0—a global nested multi-media fate, exposure, and effects model

1 The USES-LCA 2.0 modelThe Uniform System for the Evaluation of Substancesadapted for LCA purposes, in short USES-LCA, is a multi-media fate, exposure, and effects model (Huijbregts et al.2000). The model USES-LCA is based on the (E)USESmodel family applied for risk assessment purposes in theEuropean Union (Vermeire et al. 2005). It is one of themodels involved in the development of LCIA toxicityconsensus model USEtox (Rosenbaum et al. 2008). USES-LCA has recently been updated to USES-LCA 2.0 andcontains a database of 3,396 chemicals. With this version,the user has now access to an easy-to-use model thatcalculates characterization factors for ecotoxicity andhuman toxicity on both the midpoint and endpoint level.For human toxicity, characterization factors for carcino-gens, for non-carcinogens, and overall characterizationfactors are provided. Separate ecotoxicological character-ization factors are provided for terrestrial, freshwater, andmarine ecosystems. To obtain an overall ecotoxicologicalcharacterization factor on endpoint level, they are furtheraggregated on the basis of species density of terrestrial,freshwater, and marine ecosystems separately. Figure 1gives a schematic overview of USES-LCA 2.0.Compared to consensus model USEtox, the main extrafeatures of USES-LCA are (a) next to midpoint character-ization factors, endpoint characterization factors are alsocalculated; (b) next to freshwater ecotoxicity, seawater andterrestrial ecotoxicity are also addressed; and (c) variousscenario assumptions can be tested by changing scenariosettings (further details described below).This note summarizes the USES-LCA 2.0 model asdeveloped from the junction of the individual fate andintake part (Huijbregts et al. 2005b), human toxicologicalpart (Huijbregts et al. 2005a), and ecotoxicological part(Van de Meent and Huijbregts 2005; Van Zelm et al. 2007;Van Zelm et al. 2009). Any further information on thecalculation of the separate parts of the characterizationfactors can be found in these articles.2 Fate and exposure factorsFor ten emission compartments, including urban air, rural air,freshwater,andagriculturalsoil,USES-LCA2.0calculatesbydefault environmental fate and exposure factors in multiplecompartmentsandhumanintakefactorsforinhalationandoralintake using an infinite time horizon. Environmental fate andexposure factors express the change in the dissolved concen-tration in an environmental compartment due to an emissionchange. Human intake factors express the change in exposureof the total human population at continental, moderate, arctic,or tropic scale via ingestion, or inhalation due to an emissionchange in a compartment. Rain–no rain conditions areimplemented in USES-LCA 2.0 according to the intermittentrain model as outlined by Jolliet and Hauschild (2005).Due to the large uncertainty of modeling metal behaviorin the environment, USES-LCA 2.0 includes the possibilityto test the sensitivity of the metal characterization factorsaccording to the following user-specific scenario options:1. Oral intake via food by humans can be excluded for allmetals, as it has been shown that the concept ofbioconcentration, generally applicable for organic pollu-