
| Title | The Human Toxicity Potential and a Strategy for Evaluating Model Performance in Life-Cycle Impact Assessment |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2001 |
| Authors | McKone, Thomas E., and E. G. Hertwich |
| Secondary Title | International Journal of Life-Cycle Assessment |
| Volume | 6 |
| Section | Chapter |
| Number | 2 |
| Pagination | 106-109 |
| Publication Language | eng |
| Abstract | The Human Toxicity Potential (HTP) is a quantitative toxic equivalency potential (TEP) that has been introduced previously to express the potential harm of a unit of chemical released into the environment. HTP includes both inherent toxicity and generic source-to-dose relationships for pollutant emissions. Three issues associated with the use of HTP in life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) are evaluated here. First is the use of regional multimedia models to define source-to-dose relationships for the HTP. Second is uncertainty and variability in source-to-dose calculations. And third is model performance evaluation for TEP models. Using the HTP as a case study, we consider important sources of uncertainty/variability in the development of source-to-dose models--including parameter variability/uncertainty, model uncertainty, and decision rule uncertainty. Once sources of uncertainty are made explicit, a model performance evaluation is appropriate and useful and thus introduced. Model performance evaluation can illustrate the relative value of increasing model complexity, assembling more data, and/or providing a more explicit representation of uncertainty. This work reveals that an understanding of the uncertainty in TEPs as well as a model performance evaluation are needed to a) refine and target the assessment process and b) improve decision making. |
| Custom 1 | 7.1 |
| Citation Key | 11061 |