An environmental perspective of lead-free solder based on damage assessment of LCIA

LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) has been attracted and been already spread to the public as a technique evaluating the environmental impacts of product life cycle. LCA case study for lead-free solder, which is expected as eco-material has already been performed, but most of these studies are focused on LCI (Life Cycle Inventory) and characterization in LCIA (Life Cycle Impact Assessment). In the case of the assessment of solder, the trade-off relationship between the human toxicity caused by the exposure of lead and global warming caused by the increase of energy use seems important. Conventional LCA case studies are difficult to solve this trade-off relationship, because LCI and characterization will not compare the seriousness of these environmental impacts. Based on the above background, we conducted LCIA case study of lead-free solder using LIME (Life-cycle Impact assessment Method based on Endpoint modeling). We concentrated on the damage assessment for human health in order to solve the trade-off relationship between the impact categories. DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Year) is applied as the damage indicator in this study. It can be concluded that damage assessment enables to evaluate reasonably with comparing the several health impacts based on the scientific knowledge.