What do we mean by the term “life cycle analysis”?

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Citation of this page: Jouko Tuomisto: Arsenic to Zoonoses. Opasnet 2024. [1]. Accessed 21 Dec 2024. This page has also been published elsewhere: 100 kysymystä ympäristöstä ja terveydestä: arsenikista öljyyn. Kustannus Oy Duodecim, Helsinki 2005. ISBN 951-656-221-3.
Upload data {{#opasnet_base_link:Op_en4561}}	Unlike most other pages in Opasnet, the nuggets have predetermined authors, and you cannot freely edit the contents. Note! If you want to protect the nugget you've created from unauthorized editing click here Chapters in the book Arsenic to Zoonoses: Perception of the risks around us Is it the final straw that breaks the camel’s back? Is expert jargon just a way to confuse the man in the street? What is the wisdom in “It’s the dose that determines that a thing is not a poison”? What is a “chemical” after all? Is it more dangerous for us than for our ancestors? Are the risks of the domestic and the workplace environments different? Is man defiled by what goes to his mouth? What is safe to drink? Does water chlorination cause cancer? Are blue-green algae a risk to your life or at least to your liver? Does aluminium cause dementia? Arsenic in the drinking water – reminiscent of the movie “Lavender and old lace”? Are we starting to glow from the uranium in our environment? Fluoride – friend or foe? Blind drunk – or dead drunk? What is really dangerous in our diet? Should we be concerned about the amounts of additives in our diet? May even our cooking habits hurt us? Why not re-freeze thawed out frozen food? The dirty dozen – not just an old movie? Where do the dioxins come from? Are the dioxins the most dangerous chemicals in our environment? Are the PCB compounds really super-poisons? What on earth is PBDE? What are the hormonal disrupters? Tin poisoning – wasn’t even grandma’s copper kitchenware tin-plated? Are heavy metals still a problem today? Is mercury a quicksilver bullet or a slow poison? If this kills insects, what effect is it having on me? The whole field was brown-coloured; should you even go near it let alone eat anything growing there? Should we only eat “organic” products? Isn’t it safe to eat everything that grows naturally? Is it safe to eat wherever it’s convenient? What if alcohol were treated as a chemical contaminant in food? A favourite of children - and some adults too Can even a child’s toy be dangerous? How does the environment affect the child in the womb? Is impregnated wood safe in my garden or children’s playground? Can you catch toxoplasmosis from cat litter? What are children’s waterproof clothes made of? Are people too clean for their own good? Are cosmetics chemicals? Should we have antibiotic chemicals present in everyday domestic items? How safe are detergents? Can noise cause true health problems? Is allergy more common today? A healthy suntan – or is it? Should solariums carry a health warning? The air that we breathe What’s wrong with the air in our cities? People don’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning any more – do they? Can the air go up in flames? Ozone – I thought it was the hole in the ozone layer that we need to worry about? Should we go back to heating our homes with wood-burning stoves? Climate change – will it affect our health? Is formaldehyde another type of formalin? Benzene – isn’t it only found in chemistry sets? Can environmental cigarette smoke cause lung cancer? Is there radiation in my home? Do we need to monitor the quality of the air in our homes? How can a building become sick? Do our recreational pastimes require special ventilation systems? Is asbestos still a problem today? What happens when a building suffers moisture damage? Legionnaires’ disease – why should I worry, I’m not in the Foreign Legion? How do air fresheners really work? How to protect our common environment? Why is it worth investing in environmental protection? Indigenous populations live in harmony with their environment, don’t they? Environmental equilibrium and chemicals – impossible or not? Down the drain – is it a case of out of sight, out of mind? Should we compost all our household waste? Does it make sense to burn our domestic waste in power stations? Is clean energy from biomass a myth? Which type of energy production is friendliest to human health? What was the impact of the Chernobyl disaster in Europe? Is it safe to live close to polluted land? Does environmental protection also mean improved health? If we care about our environment, should we all be vegetarians? Which environmental factors increase my blood pressure? Here a risk, there a risk, everywhere risks, risks! Are there problems in the present risk assessment practices? What is risk management? What are the most common misconceptions about risks held by the man in the street? Why are experts usually so sceptical? Why do different people rate different risks so differently? Can you lessen your own personal chemical burden? Why are people afraid of dental amalgam? What do we mean by the term “life cycle analysis”? The precautionary principle – better safe than sorry? Are GM foods Frankenfoods? Mutagenesis, carcinogenesis and other scary words – what do they really mean? Which type of radiation poses the greatest threat to our health? Are most cancers caused by exposures to chemicals? Is cancer more common today than it was in the past? We breathe oxygen; it can’t be dangerous, can it? Why are animal experiments still needed? Are electric lines and transformers dangerous? How dangerous is it to use a mobile phone? We are surrounded by risks but which of them should we take seriously? Are inhabitants of different countries exposed to different risks? Before we go on holiday which environmental health precautions should we take? Should risk assessment be more transparent? Is environmental science just another religion? What happens if the human race presses the self-destruct button?

Life cycle analysis means, when we try to assess some product’s environmental or health impact, then we do not stop at the analysis of the immediate effects of the product itself but include its whole life cycle and environmental burden. In the case of petrol (gasoline) that would entail the full spectrum from oil drilling, transportation, production stages at the refinery, transportation to service stations, contamination of ground water from the tanks of service stations, to the health effects of petrol itself when handled at the service station, and finally incorporating the environmental and health effects of exhaust gases.

Benefits

Life cycle analysis is useful in that it may reveal the environmental or health impact of the whole chain of activities compared with a totally different solution to achieve the same purpose (e.g. transportation using electric-powered trains). On the other hand, a life cycle analysis is a very ambitious and demanding exercise that can be used only to illustrate very large and relatively clear chains of events.

One of the most useful benefits of life cycle analysis is that it can reveal internal inconsistencies in processes or administration. For example, risk management by sectors can lead to a situation that one sector is very finicky in some aspects that are after all not very important to the total risk which depends on decisions in some other sector. One example is the tight dioxin limit values set for contaminated soils when in fact the dioxin exposure of population depends to a large part on their intake from food, especially from fish, meat and dairy products. These depend mostly on airborne fallout. In such a case, investigation of the comprehensive life-cycle of dioxins from the emissions of industries, energy production and waste incineration through the different intermediate stages to the most important medium, food, provides a realistic picture also of the relative importance of the intermediate parts of the chain for exposure.

Important in evaluating energy alternatives

Another kind of example is energy production. When comparing the benefits and problems of energy production, one mostly takes into consideration only those impacts during the production stage with both the early and the late impacts being overlooked. In this way one can claim that certain ways of generating power e.g. wind, hydroelectric and nuclear energy have no emissions during normal operation as compared with natural gas, oil or coal. In fact before one can construct these power plants both materials and energy are needed, and it depends on their amounts and ways of production, what kind of emissions will be produced. Moreover one has to calculate material and energy consumed per unit of energy produced in order to make comparisons relevant.

As a result, one may consider wind energy and natural gas as extremes in different directions. The investment is relatively heavy in the case of wind power when calculated per kilowatt hours of energy produced. In other words, relatively large amounts of metal, plastic and concrete are needed, and energy is used in their transportation and the land restructuring before the power plant will produce one kilowatt hour of energy. Thus the construction stage will produce high emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, chromium and plastic monomers. Whereas there are no major emissions during the operation itself, the crucial question is whether the power plant will operate for ten years or hundreds of years. If the operational time is long, the investment is divided over a long-lasting production of many kilowatt hours and the unit impact per kilowatt hour is small.

A power plant burning natural gas requires relatively simple and light investment when compared with the amount of energy produced. Therefore the most critical factor is how much emissions are caused by the normal activity calculated from the production of gas at the gas field, its transportation to the power plant and its combustion in the power plant. These two very different methods of energy production (wind-power and natural gas) cannot be compared unless the whole life cycle in considered.

Life cycle analysis aims at obtaining a comprehensive evaluation of the whole chain of activities with all direct and indirect impacts.

One level up: Here a risk, there a risk, everywhere risks, risks!

Previous chapter: Why are people afraid of dental amalgam?

Next chapter: The precautionary principle – better safe than sorry?

What do we mean by the term “life cycle analysis”?

Benefits

Important in evaluating energy alternatives

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