Sustainability based on LCM of residential dwellings: A case study in Catalonia,Spain

Life cycle management (LCM) can be applied to the whole construction process, thus making it possible to improve sustainability indicators and also minimize the environmental loads of the full building life cycle. To illustrate this, a case study has been carried out based on the application of the LCM approach to a typical Spanish Mediterranean house located in Barcelona with a total area of 160 m² and a projected 50-year life span, which has been modeled according to the Spanish building technical code (CTE). The aim of this research is to use sustainability indicators in the pre-construction and operation (use and maintenance) phases and also to promote and support the adoption of the LCM within the construction industry. This paper concludes that regarding the significant environmental issue of climate change, there was a total emission of 2.34E03 kg CO₂-Eq/m² per 50 years, of which about 90.5% was during the operation phase (use 88.9% and maintenance 1.7%) and the pre-construction phase account for a total of 9.5%. In terms of this dwelling's environmental loads, the operation phase is the most critical because of the high environmental loads from energy consumption for heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting, electrical appliances and cooking.     

Burden of disease attributable to air pollutants from municipal solid waste incinerators in Seoul, Korea: a source-specific approach for environmental burden of disease

Few studies have attempted to quantify the integrated health burden, incorporating both mortality and morbidity as these factors pertain to air pollutants, on the population in the vicinity of the incinerators. The aims of this study are to estimate the attributable burden of disease caused by incinerators in Seoul, Korea and to present an approach based on source-specific exposure for the estimation of the environmental burden of disease (EBD). With particular attention on the development of a measurement means of the source-specific, exposure-based population attributable fraction (PAF), we integrated air dispersion modeling, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the population distribution of exposure, and the exposure-response relationship. We then estimated the PAFs caused by additional concentrations of four air pollutants (PM₁₀, NO_2, SO₂, and CO) emitted from four municipal solid waste incinerators (MSWIs) in Seoul in 2007. We, finally, estimated the attributable burden of disease, using the estimated PAF and the disability-adjusted life years (DALY) method developed by the Global Burden of Disease Group of the World Health Organization (WHO).The PAF for NO₂ to all-cause mortality was assessed at approximately 0.02% (95% CI: 0.003-0.036%), which was the highest among all air pollutants. The PAFs for respiratory and cardiovascular disease were 0.12% (95% CI: 0.01-0.16%) and 0.10% (95% CI: 0.04-0.16%), respectively. The sum of the attributable burden of disease for four pollutants was about 297 person-years (PYs) (95% CI: 121-472 PYs) when the incinerators observed to the emission standards. The attributable burdens of respiratory disease and cardiovascular disease were about 0.2% and 0.1%, respectively, of the total burden of respiratory disease and cardiovascular disease of Seoul citizens for the year 2007. Although the air emissions from one risk factor, an incinerator, are small, the burden of disease can be significant to the public health when population exposure is considered.