Development of ecotoxicological terrestrial effet data in the context of life cycle impact assessment

在生命周期评估(LCA)中，生命周期影响评估(LCIA)将产品生命周期(从原材料提取到生命周期结束)的排放清单转化为产品的环境概况，表明其对广泛的环境影响的潜在贡献。LCIA依靠物质特定表征因子(CFs)来表示物质对健康和环境影响的相对贡献。在生命周期评估中，与污染物排放对土壤的影响有关的特征仍然很差，仍有几个挑战需要解决。其中一个挑战是使用由于缺乏陆地生态毒理效应数据而从默认的土壤-水分配系数(Kd)外推的水生生态毒理数据(EC50)来建立有偏向的陆地效应模型。一些污染物的外推方法被认为是不确定的，因此没有对它们进行CFS计算。这是当务之急，因为缺乏特征因素可能被解释为在生命周期评价驱动的决策过程中没有陆地生态毒理影响。因此，需要产生新的陆地效应数据，以便提供更有意义的生态毒性结果。该项目将通过评估新的陆地效应数据来改善生态毒理影响的特征。这些新数据将通过采用和改进我们实验室开发的五氯苯酚(PCP)成本效益方法来产生，该方法已被证明使用PCR-变性梯度凝胶电泳(DGGE)技术得出高度代表所研究土壤细菌群落的陆地生物多样性指标，并计算生态物种多样性指数。计算CFS所需的EC50是从这些多样性指数中获得的。由于土壤微生物群落是不是在实验室中生长的本土生物，由数千个相互作用的物种组成，它们的生态位和代谢潜力不同，这种方法有可能帮助填补陆地生态毒物数据库中的许多空白。该项目的主要目标是改进新的框架，以得出土壤微生物生物多样性指标，并产生新的土壤门影响数据(EC50)，以便更好地评估LCIA陆地生态毒物影响类别的可靠性。具体目标是：1)调整框架以开发除五氯苯酚以外的有机物的新的EC50；2)测试框架是否可以得出生态毒性质量标准(EQC)，如HC50EC50；以及3)测试框架是否可以获得无机(锌)的新的陆地效应数据。CFS将根据新的效果数据计算，新的CFS将通过案例研究整合到Impact World+中并投入运作。从长远来看，这项研究将通过为目前没有的物质提供新的CFS，使更好地评估陆地生态毒理影响的特征成为可能。

Within life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) translates the inventory of emissions from a product’s life cycle (from raw materials extraction until end of life) into an environmental profile of the product, representing its potential contributions to a wide range of environmental impacts. LCIA relies on substance-specific characterization factors (CFs) to represent the relative contribution of the substance to health and environmental impacts. In life cycle assessment, the impacts related to pollutant emissions to soil remain poorly characterized, and several challenges must still be addressed. One such challenge is biased terrestrial effect modeling using aquatic ecotoxicological data (EC50) extrapolated from default soil-water distribution coefficients (Kd) due to the lack of terrestrial ecotoxicological effect data. The extrapolation approach for some pollutants is considered so uncertain that no CFs were calculated for them. This is preoccupying since the lack of characterization factors may be interpreted as an absence of terrestrial ecotoxicological impacts in a decision-making process driven by LCA. As such, there is a need to produce new terrestrial effect data in order to provide more meaningful ecotoxicity results. This project will improve the characterization of ecotoxicological impacts by assessing new terrestrial effect data. These new data will be produced by adapting and improving a cost-effective methodology developed in our laboratory for pentachlorophenol (PCP) that has been proven to yield terrestrial biodiversity indicators that are highly representative of the studied soil bacterial communities using PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) technology and calculating ecological species diversity indices. The EC50 needed to calculate the CFs are obtained from these diversity indices. As soil microbial communities are indigenous organisms that are not grown in the laboratory and composed of thousands of interacting species that differ in terms of their ecological niche and metabolic potential, this methodology has the potential to help fill the many gaps in the terrestrial ecotoxicological databases. The main goal of the project is to improve the new framework to derive soil microbial biodiversity indicators and to produce new soil phyla effect data (EC50) in order to better assess the reliability of the terrestrial ecotoxicological impact category in LCIA. The specific objectives are to: 1) adapt the framework to develop new EC50 for organics other than PCP; 2) test whether the framework can derive ecotoxicity quality criteria (EQC) such as HC50EC50 and 3) test whether the framework can derive new terrestrial effect data for an inorganic (Zn). CFs will be calculated based on the new effect data, and the new CFs will be integrated and operationalized in IMPACT World+ through case studies. In the long term, the research will make it possible to better assess the characterization of the terrestrial ecotoxicological impact by providing new CFs for substances that currently have none.