Product Assessment

Decision-Oriented Environmental Assessment of Chemical Products

For many products of the chemical industry, the data basis is not sufficient for a detailed environmental risk assessment. Existing assessment procedures are often time-consuming and data-intensive. At the same time, the chemical industry is increasingly challenged by (customers, NGOs, governments, international organizations) to integrate ecological issues into the design of new chemical products.

In our research, we apply a variety of assessment tools to chemical products such as solvents, fragrance compounds, plastic softeners, and pesticides. Our basic strategy is to divide the assessment into (i) assessment of emission scenarios and use-patterns, (ii) assessment of environmental, ecological and human exposure, and (iii) assessment of risk of adverse effects. We aim at developing suitable indicators for each of these steps; examples are persistence and spatial range, which describe the duration and spatial extent of the environmental exposure, or the risk quotient and the number of exposed individuals, which describe the magnitude and extent of human exposure to solvents and other multi-use chemicals. We base our assessment methods on evaluative models of the behavior of chemicals in the environment, and of pathways for human exposure. Model development and evaluation is therefore a key issue in many of our projects.

Decision-making contexts addressed in our projects are: Implementation of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Chemicals and the United Nations Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution; chemical ranking according to persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity (PBT assessment); and comparing the environmental performance of new products with existing chemicals. In several projects, non-scientific aspects such as legal requirements, product liability, quality demands, stake-holder perceptions and demands, and influence of value judgements on the methods and results of chemicals assessment are discussed.