System Approach for Characterizing and Evaluating Factors for Occupational Health Impacts Due to Nonfatal Injuries and Illnesses for the Use in Life Cycle Assessment.

Occupational injuries and illnesses are major risk factors for human health impacts worldwide, but they have not been consistently nor comprehensively considered in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods. In this study, we quantified occupational health impacts as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for nonfatal injuries and illnesses in all US industries. We further applied an economic input-output model of the US economy to develop a new data set of characterization factors (CFs) that links direct and indirect occupational health impacts to product life cycle final demand. We found that the CF data set varies significantly by industry, ranging from 6.1 to 298 DALYs per billion dollars. About 20% of final demand in the US economic system contributes nearly 50% of the total impacts of occupational health, suggesting occupational health impacts are concentrated in a small portion of industries. To verify the feasibility of the CFs and demonstrate their importance, we included a case of an office chair. The occupational health impacts caused by nonfatal injuries and illnesses during the production of an office chair are of the same order of magnitude as those caused by chemical emissions across the chair's life cycle, with 1.1 × 10-5 and 1.4 × 10-5 DALYs per chair, respectively. Results and data sets derived from this study support the integration of occupational health impacts with LCIA methods.

Prototypes for automating product system model assembly.

INTRODUCTION: The flexibility of life cycle inventory (LCI) background data selection is increasing with the increasing availability of data, but this comes along with the challenge of using the background data with primary life cycle inventory data. To relieve the burden on the practitioner to create the linkages and reduce bias, this study aimed at applying automation to create foreground LCI from primary data and link it to background data to construct product system models (PSM). METHODS: Three experienced LCA software developers were commissioned to independently develop software prototypes to address the problem of how to generate an operable PSM from a complex product specification. The participants were given a confidential product specification in the form of a Bill of Materials (BOM) and were asked to develop and test prototype software under a limited time period that converted the BOM into a foreground model and linked it with one or more a background datasets, along with a list of other functional requirements. The resulting prototypes were compared and tested with additional product specifications. RESULTS: Each developer took a distinct approach to the problem. One approach used semantic similarity relations to identify best-fit background datasets. Another approach focused on producing a flexible description of the model structure that removed redundancy and permitted aggregation. Another approach provided an interactive web application for matching product components to standardized product classification systems to facilitate characterization and linking. DISCUSSION: Four distinct steps were identified in the broader problem of automating PSM construction: creating a foreground model from product data, determining the quantitative properties of foreground model flows, linking flows to background datasets, and expressing the linked model in a format that could be used by existing LCA software. The three prototypes are complementary in that they address different steps and demonstrate alternative approaches. Manual work was still required in each case, especially in the descriptions of the product flows that must be provided by background datasets. CONCLUSION: The study demonstrates the utility of a distributed, comparative software development, as applied to the problem of LCA software. The results demonstrate that the problem of automated PSM construction is tractable. The prototypes created advance the state of the art for LCA software.

Conceptual Framework To Extend Life Cycle Assessment Using Near-Field Human Exposure Modeling and High-Throughput Tools for Chemicals.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a decision-making tool that accounts for multiple impacts across the life cycle of a product or service. This paper presents a conceptual framework to integrate human health impact assessment with risk screening approaches to extend LCA to include near-field chemical sources (e.g., those originating from consumer products and building materials) that have traditionally been excluded from LCA. A new generation of rapid human exposure modeling and high-throughput toxicity testing is transforming chemical risk prioritization and provides an opportunity for integration of screening-level risk assessment (RA) with LCA. The combined LCA and RA approach considers environmental impacts of products alongside risks to human health, which is consistent with regulatory frameworks addressing RA within a sustainability mindset. A case study is presented to juxtapose LCA and risk screening approaches for a chemical used in a consumer product. The case study demonstrates how these new risk screening tools can be used to inform toxicity impact estimates in LCA and highlights needs for future research. The framework provides a basis for developing tools and methods to support decision making on the use of chemicals in products.

Comprehensive Duloxetine Analysis in a Fatal Overdose.

Duloxetine is a second-generation selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor used primarily for the treatment of depression. Relatively few fatalities have been reported in association with its use. Similarly, there are no known reports that provide a comprehensive analysis of blood, fluid and tissue samples in an overdose setting. Herein we present a fatal case of duloxetine toxicity with both the highest reported post-mortem blood concentration and a comprehensive toxicological analysis of duloxetine in femoral blood, vitreous humor, liver tissue, urine and gastric contents. In doing so, we hope to provide data that can assist both toxicologists and forensic pathologists with assessing duloxetine toxicity in the future.

The work environment disability-adjusted life year for use with life cycle assessment: a methodological approach.

BACKGROUND: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a systems-based method used to determine potential impacts to the environment associated with a product throughout its life cycle. Conclusions from LCA studies can be applied to support decisions regarding product design or public policy, therefore, all relevant inputs (e.g., raw materials, energy) and outputs (e.g., emissions, waste) to the product system should be evaluated to estimate impacts. Currently, work-related impacts are not routinely considered in LCA. The objectives of this paper are: 1) introduce the work environment disability-adjusted life year (WE-DALY), one portion of a characterization factor used to express the magnitude of impacts to human health attributable to work-related exposures to workplace hazards; 2) outline the methods for calculating the WE-DALY; 3) demonstrate the calculation; and 4) highlight strengths and weaknesses of the methodological approach. METHODS: The concept of the WE-DALY and the methodological approach to its calculation is grounded in the World Health Organization's disability-adjusted life year (DALY). Like the DALY, the WE-DALY equation considers the years of life lost due to premature mortality and the years of life lived with disability outcomes to estimate the total number of years of healthy life lost in a population. The equation requires input in the form of the number of fatal and nonfatal injuries and illnesses that occur in the industries relevant to the product system evaluated in the LCA study, the age of the worker at the time of the fatal or nonfatal injury or illness, the severity of the injury or illness, and the duration of time lived with the outcomes of the injury or illness. RESULTS: The methodological approach for the WE-DALY requires data from various sources, multi-step instructions to determine each variable used in the WE-DALY equation, and assumptions based on professional opinion. CONCLUSIONS: Results support the use of the WE-DALY in a characterization factor in LCA. Integrating occupational health into LCA studies will provide opportunities to prevent shifting of impacts between the work environment and the environment external to the workplace and co-optimize human health, to include worker health, and environmental health.