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Fate coefficients for the toxicity assessment of air pollutants

  • 6th SETAC-Europe Meeting: LCA - Selected Papers
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Abstract

The inclusion of fate and exposure is a central issue in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). According to the framework developed by the Society of Environmental Toxicity and Chemistry (SETAC), fate and exposure route are included through a fate coefficient which makes the link between an emission and the related increase in concentration.

In the Critical surface-time 95 methodology, fate factors of air pollutants are determined empirically at a world level as the ratio of measured concentration to the total estimated emission flow. Based on a detailed study performed for seventeen pollutants, a correlation is developed to predict fate factors from the residence time. Variation of a factor 10000 arc observed for the fate coefficient. Empirical fate factors are compared to modelled fate factors and are found to have a similar order of magnitude.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Institute of Soil and Water Management, CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Olivier Jolliet & Pierre Crettaz

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  1. Olivier Jolliet
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  2. Pierre Crettaz
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Jolliet, O., Crettaz, P. Fate coefficients for the toxicity assessment of air pollutants. Int. J. LCA 2, 104–110 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02978768

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02978768

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