Including pathogen risk in life cycle assessment: the effect of modelling choices in the context of sewage sludge management

摘要

Recent attempts to include adverse effects of pathogens on human health in life cycle assessment (LCA) have focused on integrating results obtained through quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) as an impact category in LCA. This study aimed to investigate whether the use of QMRA can be an adequate way of integrating pathogen impact potential in LCA and to quantify how pathogen impact potential is affected by choices regarding model structure and mathematical relationships used.