About ProScale
The ProScale method enables Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) practitioners to factor in hazard and exposure data in a simple and efficient way, based on established methods. This user-friendly tool, backed by a growing database of publicly available test cases, provides users with an impact assessment method helping to substantiate the toxicity aspect of environmental assessments.
ProScale relies on readily available data from REACH. It proposes a performance-based indicator that can consolidate hazard and direct exposure potentials from chemicals along their life cycle, that can be applied and communicated within LCAs, Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and Product Environmental Footprints (PEFs).
Contrary to other characterization models concentrating on the identification of indirect toxicity impacts, ProScale focuses on human exposure to chemicals along product value chains by:
- using life cycle thinking,
- using a hazard and exposure-based approach for product assessments,
- aggregating from single chemical to a complete product and using existing, systematic and readily available data.
ProScale has the potential to be applied in a variety of situations requiring the characterisation of toxicological impacts of chemicals across the life cycle of products, including for the design and implementation of forthcoming Safe and Sustainable by Design policies for chemicals, and for possible new information requirements on the health and environmental footprint of substances in the course of the REACH registration process.
Background
ProScale was initiated in 2016 by a consortium of seven partners, with the aim of providing companies across the industrial value chain with a reliable tool enabling them to address stakeholders' requests to provide toxicological information on the chemicals used in their product systems. It was developed to address a widely recognized challenge in the evaluation of the overall environmental and health impact of products along their respective life cycles. It addresses the need to identify and quantify hazards and exposures from chemical constituents within products or otherwise used during their lifecycle.
ProScale is currently hosted by Swedish Environmental Research Institute IVL, which is further developing some of its methodological aspects (e.g. normalization for aggregation in LCA) and consolidating basic datasets derived from publicly available databases. Test cases have been performed across various industry sectors, all confirming the method’s reliability and ease of use to characterize toxicological hazard and exposure across the life cycle of given products.
The ProScale Consortium
- BASF
- Covestro AG
- Deutsche Bauchemie e.V.
- Dow Chemical
- IVL Swedish Environmental Institute
- Kingspan
- Merck KGaA
- Royal DSM N.V.
- Solvay S.A.
- Uetliberg Partners