Hello,
Do you recommend to use some model for calculating emission factors when we study pesticide impacts? What do you think about PestLCI model? If we use the PestLCI so how should I calculate the final characterization factor? And should we consider the usetox default in that case?
The USEtox team does not recommend any specific tool or software for calculating life cycle inventory data including emissions from application of agricultural pesticides.
PestLCI 2.0 is, however, currently one of the more advanced models to estimate emissions from agricultural pesticides in LCA (see Fantke 2019, Table 2) was recommended in a global consensus building workshop series (see Rosenbaum et al. 2015) as a valuable starting point for combining environmental emissions from agricultural pesticides to characterization factors. The currently ongoing OLCA-Pest project is implementing many of the recommendations from the consensus building workshops including adapting PestLCI for best possible combination of USEtox characterization factors.
Thank you for your response!
Just to ensure, how should I calculate the final characterization factor? Is it the sum of all midpoint/endpoint emission compartments? And if I use some emission model that includes e.g. emission factors for air and freshwater, so should I add them to corresponding continental air and freshwater midpoint/endpoint factors in Usetox?
At midponit level, impact scores per substance are derived separately for each indicator (e.g. human toxicity, cancer) by summing over the product of emission compartment specfiic characterization factors and emissions.
At damage (endpoint) level, impact scores can also be aggregated over different indicators within the same impact category.
This is further described in the USEtox documentation, Chapter 2.