78th webinar in the CentrEau Hebd'Eau series entitled "Life Cycle Assessment of human health impacts associated with domestic water scarcity" by Laura Debarre
Laura Debarre is a general engineer from IMT-Mines Albi in France. She discovered the world of Life Cycle Assessment during a double degree at Polytechnique Montréal in 2019. Her interest in the field led her to start a master's research at CIRAIG (International Reference Centre for the Life Cycle of Products, Processes and Services) aimed at improving the characterization of potential impacts on human health linked to water consumption and domestic user deprivation. This project was carried out under the supervision of prof. Manuele Margni and prof. Anne-Marie Boulay. Following her master's degree, Laura opted for a PhD aimed at better integrating impacts on ecosystem services in Life Cycle Assessment (under the supervision of prof. Manuele Margni).
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) quantifies the potential environmental impacts of products, services or organizations throughout the various stages of their life cycle (extraction of raw materials, production, transport, use, end-of-life). LCA is multi-criteria and can be used to obtain a variety of impact profiles, highlighting the impact of systems in terms of environmental problems (climate change, eutrophication, acidification, water scarcity) or in terms of damage (to human health or ecosystem quality). The model presented in this webinar has been developed to quantify the indirect impacts on human health (damage) induced by water consumption in a given region. The model is based on the following cause-and-effect chain: water consumption (during one of the stages in the system's life cycle) can lead to a drop in local availability for other users. This can lead to water deprivation for domestic uses, leading to the consumption of low-quality water and/or the reduction of hygiene and sanitation practices. These behaviors are likely to lead to the occurrence of water-related diseases. The model of Boulay et al (2011) has been developed to represent and quantify this chain of cause and effect, proposing characterization factors expressed in DALY (loss of one year of healthy life)/m3 consumed. The work of Debarre et al (2022) has updated and discussed the methodological choices made by Boulay et al (2011), and Debarre et al (in preparation) propose an improvement to one of the model's factors, quantifying the impacts of water deprivation in terms of diarrhoeal disease.
The presentation will be given in French
