Indoor Air Pollutant Exposure for Life Cycle Assessment: Regional Health Impact Factors for Households

Title

Indoor Air Pollutant Exposure for Life Cycle Assessment: Regional Health Impact Factors for Households

 Author

Rosenbaum, R.K.
Meijer, A.
Demou, E.
Hellweg, S.
Jolliet, O.
Lam, N.L.
Margni, M.
McKone, T.E.

Faculty

Architecture and The Built Environment

 Department

OTB

 Date

2015-10-07

 Abstract

Human exposure to indoor pollutant concentrations is receiving increasing interest in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). We address this issue by incorporating an indoor compartment into the USEtox model, as well as by providing recommended parameter values for households in four different regions of the world differing geographically, economically, and socially. With these parameter values, intake fractions and comparative toxicity potentials for indoor emissions of dwellings for different air tightness levels were calculated. The resulting intake fractions for indoor exposure vary by 2 orders of magnitude, due to the variability of ventilation rate, building occupation, and volume. To compare health impacts as a result of indoor exposure with those from outdoor exposure, the indoor exposure characterization factors determined with the modified USEtox model were applied in a case study on cooking in non-OECD countries. This study demonstrates the appropriateness and significance of integrating indoor environments into LCA, which ensures a more holistic account of all exposure environments and allows for a better accountability of health impacts. The model, intake fractions, and characterization factors are made available for use in standard LCA studies via www.usetox.org and in standard LCA software.

 To reference this document use:

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:c9eb8bd9-c9e0-4ca2-99f8-87df971f880f

 Publisher

American Chemical Society

 ISSN

0013-936X

 Source

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5b00890

 Source

Environmental Science & Technology, 49 (21), 2015

 Part of collection

Institutional Repository

 Document type

journal article

 Rights

© 2015 American Chemical Society
This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited.
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