Risk Assessment and Life Cycle Assessment, Environmental Strategies, Nordic Workshop, Vedbæk 1999

At a Nordic workshop on Product-oriented Environmental Strategies the roles of risk and hazard assessment and life cycle assessment of products in the future regulation of chemicals were discussed by participants representing administration, academia and industry from the Nordic countries. This report compiles the papers and presentations given at the workshop.

The papers present and discuss the different assessment tools and procedures - for individual chemicals through hazard and risk assessments and for products, materials and services through life-cycle assessment. The report also contains summaries of the workshop discussions, including comparisons between tools and strategies, as these are presently applied in administrative practice.

The report also contains an overview of the most used databases within these tools. In its conclusions, the report emphasises the need for administrators, consultants and private enterprises to consider these well-established tools as individually necessary for the future regulation of the chemical pressure on the environment and to accept them as complementary to each other.

Together with other process- or chain oriented tools like Substance or Material Flow Analyses, Input/output analysis, Environmental Audits and Performance evaluations and Cost Accounting they constitute the toolbox of analysis and management tools required for a full product-related strategy towards a sustainable development.