Life Cycle Impact Assessments: Learning from the Past

Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) has been suggested as an effective means of providing strategic environmental information to enable more informed decision making. The process of how to conduct an LCIA has been the center of controversy as evidenced during the development of the draft international standard life cycle assessment principles and framework document (ISO 14040). For the past decade, successful methods have been employed in the field of human health and ecological risk assessment to predict chemical-related environmental impacts. This paper investigates areas of commonality between LCIA and risk assessment, and presents a conceptual framework suggesting how better integration of risk assessment might be achieved in the automotive industry's goal of reducing car fluff quantity and toxicity.