Dear USEtox Team or Other Users,
I am currently working on a college project focused on improving the sustainability of a company that produces fabric speaker cones for loudspeakers. The manufacturing process, which involves converting basic fabric into suitable material and molds, requires the use of various chemicals and dyes. Conducting a full life cycle analysis is likely beyond the scope of my project, so I am looking for a simplified comparison tool to estimate the environmental impacts of components such as black dyes or flame retardants.
My primary goal is to illustrate the environmental, economic, and social differences between dyed and undyed fabrics. As I do not have a strong chemistry background, I am particularly interested in accessible, low-hanging fruit solutions. Would USEtox be a suitable platform for this purpose? Any advice on where to start or which programs to use would be greatly appreciated.
Respectivly,
Caden
USEtox can be used to evaluate and compare the toxicity-related impact on humans and ecosystems at the level of chemical or at the level of product (i.e. aggregated across chemicals emitted along a product's life cycle and its chemical constituents). With that, USEtox allows for quantifying and comparing the environmental performance in terms of toxicity (humans) and ecotoxicity (ecosystems) of a given chemical or product systems as relevnat, for example, in LCA or chemical substitution.
USEtox does not cover any other impact category relevant for assessing environmental impacts (e.g. climate change, acidification, land use), nor does it evalaute the economic or social impacts of a given chemical, product or technology. However, toxicity-related impacts assessed with USEtox can be translated into related monetary terms, but are restricted to toxicity-related aspects.