The Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) phase of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the evaluation of potential human health and environmental impacts of the environmental resources and releases identified during the life cycle inventory (LCI). The overarching purpose of LCIA is to provide additional information to assess LCI results and help users better understand the environmental significance of natural resource use and environmental releases. Impact assessment should address all the relevant ecological and human health effects, as well as resource depletion. A life cycle impact assessment attempts to establish a linkage between the product or process and its potential environmental impacts. For example, what are the impacts of 9,000 tons of carbon dioxide or 5,000 tons of methane emissions released into the atmosphere? Which is worse? What are their potential impacts on smog? On global warming? An important distinction exists between LCIA and other types of impact analysis, such as traditional risk assessment, i.e. LCIA does not directly assess the impact of chemical releases. This presentation includes a brief history of the development of the state-of-the-art LCIA approach and describes the diversity that is found in the various LCIA models that are currently used, along with the accompanying criticism that having several methodologies to choose from presents. Discussion on the direction of future LCIA development is also included. Most significantly, further development is needed in modeling important resource-related impact categories such as water use and land use, addressing issues such as ecosystem services, and incorporating spatial and temporal differentiation (Margni and Curran (2012): �Life Cycle Impact Assessment� in the LCA Handbook).

Life cycle impact assessment: A primer

248th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.