Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Therefore, we can conclude that alternative fuels like bioethanol are not necessarily
advantageous in terms of human health impacts, solely because they are derived from a
renewable source [82].
How to Assess Environmental and Health Impacts of Bioethanol Production?
Adverse environmental consequences of fossil fuels and concerns about petroleum
supplies have spurred the search for renewable transportation biofuels. To be a viable
alternative, a bioethanol should provide a net energy gain, have environmental benefits, be
economically competitive, and be producible in large quantities without reducing food
supplies [87].
According to ISO 14040 and 1042 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is essentially meant to
improve the understanding of the results of the inventory phase. In order to determinate the
interaction between a product and the environment it is necessary to understand the
environmental aspects of products. Therefore in the method Eco indicator 99 environment is
definite as set of biological, physical and chemical parameters influenced by man, that are
conditions to the functioning of man and nature. These conditions include human health,
ecosystems quality and sufficient supply and resources. From this definition it follows that
there are basically three damage categories; human health, ecosystem quality and resources
[88].
Human Health
Human health can be damaged either by reducing its duration of life by premature death
or by causing a temporary or permanent reduction of body functions. According to current
knowledge, the environmental sources for such damages are mainly following; infections
disease, cardiovascular and respiratory disease, as well as forced displacement due to the
climate change, cancer as result of ionising radiation, cancer and eye damages due to ozone
layer depletion, respiratory disease and cancer due to toxic chemicals in air, drinking water
and food. These damages represent the most important damages to human health caused by
emissions from product systems [88].
Ecosystem Quality
Ecosystems are very complex, and it is very difficult to determine all damages inflicted
upon them. The species diversity is used as an indicator for ecosystem quality. Therefore
damage is expressed as a percentage of species that are threatened or that disappear from a
given area during a certain time [88].
Ecotoxicity
This method determines the potentially affected fraction (PAF) of species in relation to
the concentration of toxic substances. PAFs are determined on the basis of toxicity data for
terrestrial and aquatic organisms. The PAF expresses the percentage of species that is exposed
to concentrations above no observed effect concentration. The higher the concentration is the
larger is the number of species that are affected. The PAF damage function has a typical S-
curve [88].
