Yurika Nishioka
Exposure, Epidemiology and Risk Program, Harvard School of Public Health

This presentation will discuss an approach for integrating life cycle assessment and risk assessment to quantify population risks associated with product systems. As in a health risk analysis, human health impacts in life cycle impact assessments (LCIA) are estimated as a function of exposure and potency. For particulate matter (PM), the regional variability in PM emission-concentration relationships is well characterized in countries like the U.S. where air pollution studies have been extensively conducted in the past. For volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds such as POPs, the multimedia modeling-based emission-concentration relationships are well-characterized in the U.S. To estimate population exposure one can rely on the concept of intake fractions (a dimensionless ratio between the amount of pollutant intake and the amount of a pollutant emitted) as a summary measure for the emission-concentration-exposure relationship. The intake fraction concept is most useful in the context of LCIA where the number of sources to model is usually large and the input information needed to construct detailed dispersion or multi-media models is often unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Using a case study, this presentation will demonstrate how intake fractions are developed and applied to characterize population risks in LCIA.