Life Cycle Impact Assessment for Manufacturing Metals Based on Damage Estimations

To fulfill the requirements for the improvement of the transparency and reliability of impact assessment, the development of endpoint approach has been paid attention internationally. Endpoint approach concentrates on the estimation of damages for receptors. The actual damages are quite dependent on the emitted and exposed area. We are developing an endpoint type LCIA methodology for Japan. This paper describes an overview of this methodology and the result of a case study for stainless steel. We applied DALY concept to indicate the damage of human health. This enables us to directly compare the result with several well-known methodologies. According to the results of calculations, many similarities between the methodologies are found and the significances of the endpoint type methodology are proved.