Confronting the Health Burden of Fine Particulate Matter Exposures in Product-Oriented Impact Assessment
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is one of the most important environmental factors contributing to global human disease burden.However, lacking a clear guidance on how to address health effects from PM2.5 exposure in a product life cycle perspective, practitioners often fail to report life cycle impacts for this category.To address this need, a task force was initiated to build a PM2.5 health impact framework and exposure factors.Existing literature was reviewed and expert input was collected and discussed in an initial Guidance Workshop.Subsequent work combined existing models and methods based on a set of defined criteria to develop initial guidance and recommendations for quantifying health effects from PM2.5 exposure.Recommendations include: (1) the framework proposed by Humbert et al. (doi:10.1021/es103563z)provides an assessment starting point; (2) intake fraction can be used as exposure metric with breathing rate linking air concentration and intake; (3) disability-adjusted life years without age-weighting and discounting can be used as a health metric; (4) archetypes can account for aspects influencing intake fractions; (5) spatial differentiation should be established for all archetypes; (6) emission-weights are needed in all cases where emission and/or exposure conditions are unclear; (7) the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study provides a useful starting point for effect assessments; (8) cause-specific mortality can provide an informative basis as metric, but disability weights need further analyses; and ( 9) it remains to be discussed how to address non-linear exposure-response.There is insufficient evidence to differentiate between different PM2.5 sources or particle sizes regarding toxicity.Our study constitutes a first step towards providing guidance for how to account for health effects of PM2.5 exposures in product-oriented impact assessments.However, some inconclusive aspects require further analysis.
Authors: McKone, T.E., Jolliet, O., Fantke, Peter
Language: English
Subfield: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2604369334