A New Approach to Acidification in LCA

Any air emission is classified as acidic when the release of that emission causes the resultant precipitation to have a higher hydrogen ion concentration - [H⁺] - than that for normal rainwater. The treatment of acidifying airborne emissions in life cycle assessment has, to date, consisted principally of globally aggregated inventory data. As such their use in calculating [H⁺] is inappropriate since acidification is a regional rather than a global effect. This paper suggests a different approach, in which standard chemistry calculation techniques are used to determine [H⁺] at a regional level, accounting for both variations in acid mix and local precipitation.