Assessment of the impact on human health of industrial emissions to air: does the result depend on the applied method?
The impact on human health of substances emitted to air by the Flemish industry was calculated with characterization factors (CFs) provided by the CML, Eco-indicator 99, EPS, EDIP and USEtox impact assessment methods. A comparison of the results pointed out that the choice of the CFs can greatly influence conclusions on the trend of the impact over time and on the relative contribution of the individual substances. If the impact on human health of organic substances and heavy metals was assessed separately, the differences between methods were less pronounced. In this case, the impacts on human health obtained by simply dividing the emitted masses of substances by the respective minimal risk concentrations or minimal risk doses, were comparable to those calculated with the CFs of the model-based methods.
Van Caneghem
J
J
Department of Chemical Engineering, Leuven University, W. Decroylaan 46, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium. Electronic address: jo.vancaneghem@cit.kuleuven.be.
Block
C
C
Groep T Leuven Engineering College, Vesaliusstraat 16, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Vandecasteele
C
C
Department of Chemical Engineering, Leuven University, W. Decroylaan 46, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium.
D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000633:toxicity*; D006801:Humans; D007221:Industry; D018570:Risk Assessment
D000393:Air Pollutants