Characterization of damages from road traffic noise in life cycle impact assessment: A method based on emission and propagation models

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique widely used to comprehensively characterize the environmental impacts of human activities, and covers a broad range of environmental impact categories. Despite the recognized significant impact of environmental noise on public health, mostly because of road traffic, until now noise has not been systematically included in LCA. Research has showed, however, that the addition of the impacts of noise could significantly change the interpretation of LCA results, specifically considering the importance of road transportation in the global economy. This paper proposes a method to calculate characterization factors (CF) for life cycle impact assessment of noise emissions from road traffic on human health. The method builds on up-to-date noise emission and propagation models. It was successfully tested on a demonstrative test bed case, which allowed us to identify the most suitable elementary flows, and draw the spatial variability of the CF and the associated uncertainties. Finally, the case proved that the consideration of noise could double the magnitude of the human health damages due to road transportation, which could significant affect policy decisions. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.