Other Environmental Impact Categories

The model of Accumulated Exceedance (Seppälä, Posch, Johansson, & Hettelingh, 2006)¹ reflects the potential of a substance to cause the acid deposition or “acid rain” (Anderson & Thornback, 2012)² as its equivalent charge in mols of hydrogen ions (H+). This model is used in AgBalance® Model, for the assessment of acidification of all emissions.

The chosen methodology considers the entire atmospheric lifetime, therefore, a substance can be characterized by the amount of ozone it can destroy. This characterization follows the assessment of the World Meterological Organisation (1999)³, which assess the impact of gaseous substances in the destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer as the equivalent mass of trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11).

A model developed by UNEP-SETAC Task Force on PM (Fantke, et al., 2016)⁴ is used AgBalance® Model for the assessment of the impact of particulate matter. It quantifies the damage to human health caused by primary and secondary PM_2,5, as a change in the mortality due to the exposure to these emissions in terms of deaths per kilogram of PM_2,5.

In AgBalance^®, gaseous substances are characterized by their potential of photochemical ozone formation using the model of (Van Zelm, et al., 2008)⁵, based on the mass of non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC) as a reference.

The CML method is integrated in the model which considers the natural reserves of resources and their rates of extraction, using the depletion of the element antimony (Sb) as a reference, to derive characterization factors for the depletion of minerals and metals (Guinée & Heijungs, 1995)⁶ (van Oers, de Koning, Guinée, & Huppes, 2002)⁷. Thus, it indicates the decreasing availability of non-renewable resources as a relation between the consumption and scarcity of minerals and metals (Anderson & Thornback, 2012)^2.

Similar to the resource use of minerals and metals, it indicates the decreasing availability of energy-bearing materials as a relation between the consumption and scarcity of fossil fuels and uranium, based on the ultimate reserve of fossil carbon in the earth’s crust and uranium, respectively (Guinée & Heijungs, 1995; van Oers, de Koning, Guinée, & Huppes, 2002)^6;7.