Land use in life cycle assessment

As human population is continuously increasing, productive land is becoming even more limited resource for biomass production. Land use and land use change cause various environmental impacts. At the moment the focus is on land use related greenhouse gas emissions, but changes in carbon cycles and storages, soil quality and soil net productivity, and loss of biodiversity are growing in importance. Additionally, changes in land use and land cover also affect water quality and availability. Currently, land use related terminology is diverse, and the methodologies to assess the impacts of land use and land use change are still partly under development. The aim of this study was to discuss how land use induced environmental impacts can be taken into consideration in the life cycle assessment (LCA).  This report summarises the results of the FINLCA project’s (Life Cycle Assessment Framework and Tools for Finnish Companies) two tasks (WP 2.1 land use and WP 5.2 biomaterials). The study was conducted in co-operation with the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. As a result, we show that it is possible to make land use impact assessment with LCA. Indicators are available for climate impacts and for all the other identified land use impact categories (resource depletion, soil quality, and biodiversity). However, limited land use related data reduces the reliability of the results. Most widely used life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods (e.g. ReCiPe, CML or EI99) cover only one aspect of land use induced environmental impacts. Additionally, some of the land use indicator results are difficult to understand and communicate. From the company perspective, we considered that accounting of land occupation (m2a) and transformation (m2 from and to) is a good starting point together with the relatively simple ecological footprint indicator for productive land occupation (resource depletion). A more comprehensive and challenging approach to land use impact assessment in LCA is to include all three impact categories and add the SOC/SOM indicator for soil quality impacts and EDP or PDF indicator for biodiversity. In case no quantitative assessment can be done, we propose that companies would map their raw materials’ origins. Even a qualitative assessment related to products’ life cycles would help to identify if there are any potential land use or direct and indirect land use change risks

Suomalaisyrityksistä maailman vesivastuullisimmat : Tiekartta 2019–2030

Tässä tiekartassa määritämme Suomen vesivastuullisuuden kansallisen tavoitetilan 2030, luomme katsauksen vesivastuullisuuden taustaan ja nykytilaan, ja tunnistamme tiekartan toimeenpanolle neljä keskeistä kulmakiveä sekä etenemispolut. Tavoitteena on, että suomalaisyritykset ovat maailman vesivastuullisimpia vuonna 2030. Yritysten tueksi suomalaiset tutkimuslaitokset, ministeriöt ja WWF Suomi ovat perustaneet vesivastuusitoumuksen, jota yritykset voivat hyödyntää omassa vastuullisuustyössään. Vesivastuusitoumus on kannustava viitekehys yrityksille kestävän veden käytön arviointiin ja kehittämiseen tuotannossa ja arvoketjussa. Vesivastuullinen tuotanto ja kulutus sekä vesivastuusitoumukset tukevat vuonna 2018 julkaistun Suomen vesialan kansainvälisen strategian tavoitteita ja toimeenpanoa. Ilmastonmuutos vaikuttaa alueelliseen vedensaatavuuteen monin eri tavoin, minkä vuoksi vastuullinen veden käyttö on keskeistä kestävän kehityksen edistämisessä. Yritykset ovat suuria vedenkäyttäjiä ja veteen liittyvät kansainväliset haasteet vaikuttavat myös suomalaisten yritysten ja niiden kumppanien toimintaan. Yrityksillä on keskeinen rooli veden kestävyyshaasteiden ratkaisemisessa ja kestävien käytäntöjen kehittämisessä. Vastuullinen veden käyttö on kilpailuvaltti kansainvälisillä markkinoilla. Suomella on useista vesivastuullisuuteen liittyviä vahvuuksia verrattuna muihin maihin, mutta kehitettävää on kaikilla vedenkäytön sektoreilla sekä niiden arvoketjuissa. Tiekartassa tunnistetaan yritysten lisäksi muiden tärkeiden toimijoiden, kuten tutkimus- ja oppilaitosten, ministeriöiden ja kansalaisjärjestöjen rooli vesivastuullisuuden edistämisessä. Toimijaverkoston tehtävä on tukea yritysten vesivastuullisten toimenpiteiden käyttöönottoa. Tiekarttaa täydentää vuosittainen toimeenpanosuunnitelma

Guidelines for consistent reporting of exchanges/to nature within life cycle inventories (LCI)

Data availability and data quality are still critical factors for successful LCA work. The SETAC-Europe LCA Working Group ‘Data Availability and Data Quality' has therefore focused on ongoing developments toward a common data exchange format, public databases and accepted quality measures to find science-based solutions than can be widely accepted. A necessary prerequisite for the free flow and exchange of life cycle inventory (LCI) data and the comparability of LCIs is the consistent definition, nomenclature, and use of inventory parameters. This is the main subject of the subgroup ‘Recommended List of Exchanges' that presents its results and findings here: • Rigid parameter lists for LCIs are not practical; especially, compulsory lists of measurements for all inventories are counterproductive. Instead, practitioners should be obliged to give the rationale for their scientific choice of selected and omitted parameters. The standardized (not: mandatory!) parameter list established by the subgroup can help to facilitate this. • The standardized nomenclature of LCI parameters and the standardized list of measurement bases (units) for these parameters need not be appliedinternally (e.g. in LCA software), but should be adhered to inexternal communications (data for publication and exchange). Deviations need to be clearly stated. • Sum parameters may or may not overlap - misinterpretations in either direction introduce a bias of unknown significance in the subsequent life cycle impact assessments (LCIA). The only person who can discriminate unambiguously is the practitioner who measures or calculates such values. Therefore, a clear statement of independence or overlap is necessary for every sum parameter reported. • Sum parameters should be only used when the group of emissions as such is measured. Individually measured emission parameters should not be hidden in group or sum parameters. • Problematic substances (such as carcinogens, ozone depleting agents and the like) maynever be obscured in group emissions (together with less harmful substances or with substances of different environmental impact), butmust be determined and reported individually, as mentioned in paragraph 3.3 of this article. • Mass and energy balances should be carried out on a unit process level. Mass balances should be done on the level of the entire mass flow in a process as well as on the level of individual chemical elements. • Whenever possible, practitioners should try to fill data gaps with their knowledge of analogous processes, environmental expert judgements, mass balance calculations, worst case assumptions or similar estimation procedure

Reelin Associated With Restricted and Stereotyped Behavior Based on Principal Component Analysis on Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised

Tämä artikkeli ei ole avattavissa lehden sivuilta, koska linkit ja DOI vievät väärään artikkeliin samoin PDF sen ohessa. Kustantajalle ilmoitettu ja pyydetty korjausta.Abstract Background: Twin and family studies have indicated a strong genetic component in autism spectrum disorders, and genetic studies have revealed highly heterogeneous risk factors. The range and severity of the symptom presentation also vary in the spectrum. Thus, symptom-based phenotypes are putatively more closely related to the underlying biology of autism than the end-state diagnosis. Methods: We performed principal component analysis on Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised algorithm for 117 Finnish families and 594 families from the Autism Genetic Research Exchange (AGRE). The resulting continuous component scores were used as quantitative phenotypes in family-based association analysis. In addition, K-means clustering was performed to cluster and visualize the results of the PCA. Unaffected siblings were included in the study. Results: The components were interpreted as Social Component (SC), communication component and Restricted and Stereotyped Behavior Component (RSBC). K-means clustering showed that, especially in SC, the range of the symptom severity was increased by the siblings. The association of neuroligin 1 with SC was increased, compared to a previous study where only the end-state diagnosis was used. In RSBC, the range of the symptom severity of siblings overlapped greatly with that of patients, which could explain why no association of reelin was found in previous studies in which only the end-state diagnosis was used, but a significant association of reelin with RSBC was now found in the Finnish families (Bonferroni-corrected p=0.029 for rs362644). Although, the Finnish sample is isolated and genetically very homogeneous, compared to the heterogeneous background of AGRE families, many single-nucleotide polymorphisms in reelin, showed modest association with RSBC in the AGRE sample, too. Conclusions: This study demonstrates how the quantitative phenotypes can affect the association analyses, and yields further support to the use of siblings in the study of complex neuropsychiatric disorders.Peer reviewe

Cerebral small vessel disease genomics and its implications across the lifespan

White matter hyperintensities (WMH) are the most common brain-imaging feature of cerebral small vessel disease (SVD), hypertension being the main known risk factor. Here, we identify 27 genome-wide loci for WMH-volume in a cohort of 50,970 older individuals, accounting for modification/confounding by hypertension. Aggregated WMH risk variants were associated with altered white matter integrity (p = 2.5×10-7) in brain images from 1,738 young healthy adults, providing insight into the lifetime impact of SVD genetic risk. Mendelian randomization suggested causal association of increasing WMH-volume with stroke, Alzheimer-type dementia, and of increasing blood pressure (BP) with larger WMH-volume, notably also in persons without clinical hypertension. Transcriptome-wide colocalization analyses showed association of WMH-volume with expression of 39 genes, of which four encode known drug targets. Finally, we provide insight into BP-independent biological pathways underlying SVD and suggest potential for genetic stratification of high-risk individuals and for genetically-informed prioritization of drug targets for prevention trials.Peer reviewe