Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a useful tool for evaluating the potential environmental impact and resource utilization of products and for understanding the risks and liabilities across supply chains. Indeed, major textile brands have performed product-level LCA's and are changing business practices as a result of those assessments. But LCA has well-known shortcomings. Results for the same product can vary widely depending on the type of software used, the system boundaries, the impact categories chosen and the quality of the data. Further, LCA was developed for products from industrial processes and the existing models, especially those related to human and ecotoxicity, although improving, are not optimized for agricultural systems. For example, USEtox, a consensus-based model for evaluating life cycle impacts to aquatic organisms and human health due to chemical exposures, is considered the most advanced LCA toxicity model. Yet the USEtox database of chemical properties relies on estimated data from computer models built upon limited data sources and does not take advantage of the extensive empirical data that exists for pesticides. Nor does USEtox take into account the comprehensive risk assessment methodology required by regulators worldwide. Consequently, depending on data sources used, USEtox results may differ by orders of magnitude and conclusions about risk based on USEtox results may not be scientifically sound. This talk will elaborate on the limitations of the USEtox methodology for assessing toxicity impacts related to pesticide use in cotton production.

Challenges of using USEtox for environmental and human safety assessment in agricultural systems

248th National Meeting (2014)

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