Patching Data Gaps and Guiding Chemical Substitution Using Expert Elicitation

The Home and Personal Care Sector launched research in October of 2010 to determine the types of decisions that experts use to substitute a known chemical life cycle data set to represent that of an unknown chemical. Experts from academia and industry in the respective fields of chemistry, chemical engineering, toxicology and life cycle assessment were surveyed electronically. This information will be used to develop a general guidance for LCA practitioners and be used to substitute chemicals in databases where no data is available. This will enable impacts related to chemical production to be measured for a wide array of products with decreased variability and uncertainty. An interim report of the project will be available in December 2010.