Front cover: USEtox—The UNEP-SETAC toxicity model enabling a more consistent assessment of toxic effects on both human health and ecosystems ---
The front cover depicts the cause-effect chain, as described and quantified by the USEtox model (pp. 532-546), representing the environmental mechanism linking an emission to disease incidence as a potential effect on human health or to potentially affected species in an ecosystem. USEtox provides a parsimonious and transparent tool to consistently determine impacts on human health and ecosystem for several thousands of substances. It forms the basis of the recommendations from the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative regarding characterisation of toxic impacts in Life Cycle Assessment. For LCA practitioners, these toxicity factors are very useful to identify the 10 to 30 most important toxics to look at in priority for their case and, perhaps more importantly, to disregard the hundreds of other substances whose impacts are not significant for the considered application.
