From: Mr. Wayne Trusty 
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 3:29 AM
To: Rita Schenck; data2@lcacenter.org
Subject: Re: Data Availability - General question/comment RESPOND TOTHIS
MESSAGE WITH ---REPLY TO ALL---

Rita:

Following are a couple of comments re your questions to Bill Haaf.

I think we have to be cautious about expecting LCA to do it all.  It may be
that the kind of health effects you mention are more a matter for 'life
cycle thinking' than for LCA per se.  That is not to say you could not
devise a study to look at commuting effects in a specific location over some
defined time frame.  But if it is going to be an LCA we have to first ask
"the life of what": A specific highway? The full set of commuting options
for a given city?  And you then have to determine an appropriate functional
unit equivalent to the ton-miles unit that is generally used for goods
transportation.  With those basic questions answered, you might then devise
a very comprehensive, but also very site- or region-specific LCA in as much
detail as you care to go, including the production of vehicles, etc.

The US LCI Database Project is intended to support such a specific study by
providing critical common elements such as fuel combustion effects by mode
and ton- or passenger-mile, pre-combustion effects (the effects of making
and moving energy), basic extraction and manufacturing of aggregates,
cement, asphalt, primary steel and other metals, etc.  But it cannot, and
has never been intended to, provide a "holistic" cradle-to-grave assessment
of any specific activity.  It is intended to provide the modules that will
make that kind work easier and more consistent from study to study.

A final thought.  Because of its nature, the US LCI Database Project will
not deal with very site specific effects such as the effects of highways on
habitat ‹ effects that vary not only from region to region, but from highway
segment to segment within a region (perhaps using segments as short as ten
miles).  That is certainly the case with many other land using systems and
processes.  The site-specific effects must, almost by definition, be the
subject of separate studies.  Again, the Database Project can be supportive
by providing critical common data elements.

I trust the preceding is helpful and look forward to any comments from you
or others.

Regards
Wayne Trusty

On 5/20/02 4:01 PM, "Rita Schenck"  wrote:

> I have a question specifically for Bill Haaf, but would like to have
> comments from others as well.
> 
> Bill, you mention "holistic examples" as a need to demonstrate the value of
> LCA, and I agree. Some of the efforts of the US LCI database will be to look
> at transportation and to the energy grid. I certainly agree that these are
> both critical data sets that need to be addressed, but I am concerned that
> it will be difficult to "think outside of the box" for a truly holistic
> model to be developed.
> 
> For example, transportation is not simply a question of fuel consumption and
> emissions control. Instead, a holistic LCA o transportation in the US would
> include issues of habitat fragmentation, and the health effects of sitting
> essentially completely still for the hours of the daily commute. Neither of
> these issues is well characterized by current LCI data or LCIA models.
> 
> Rita Schenck
> 
> Institute for Environmental Research and Education
> P.O. Box 2449
> 17917 Vashon Hwy SW
> Vashon, WA 98070
> 206-463-7430
> 206-279-1570 (f)
> http://www.iere.org
> 

-- 
Wayne B. Trusty, President
Athena Sustainable Materials Institute
P.O. Box 189, 28 St. John Street
Merrickville, ON, Canada, K0G 1N0
Phone: 613-269-3795  Fax: 613-269-3796