Professional training in toxicity assessment with USEtox®
USEtox represents best practice to characterize human toxicity and ecotoxicity impacts from chemical emissions and chemicals in products as an interface between ever advancing science and a need for stability, parsimony, transparency, and reliability.
We offer training to students and professionals who use USEtox in life cycle assessment, footprinting, substitution and risk screening. Our courses are tailored to your needs to apply and further adapt or expand USEtox.
We provided professional USEtox training already for e.g. Hempel A/S, Bologna University (Italy) and Luke (Finland)!
A reference model for evaluating chemical impacts
USEtox’ mission is to improve the understanding and management of chemicals by quantifying exposure and impacts of chemicals in products and in the environment. USEtox is endorsed by UNEP’s Life Cycle Initiative, and is applied by many organizations worldwide.
USEtox is applied in a wide range of decision support tools, including:
- Life cycle assessment (LCA) & chemical footprinting
- Chemical substitution & chemical alternatives assessment (CAA)
- Safe and sustainable-by-design (SSbD)
- High-throughput exposure and risk screening (HTS)
- Chemical prioritization
- Absolute environmental sustainability assessment (AESA)
- External cost assessment & cost-benefit analysis (CBA)
With its quantitative approach, covering toxicity and ecotoxicity impact pathways, and its comparative and life cycle based perspective, USEtox captures both emitter and receptor perspectives, allowing aligned evaluations and ranking of chemicals across decision support frameworks.
Watch this video of Prof. Peter Fantke introducing USEtox, or visit the official USEtox website for more details and for downloading the USEtox model.
Web-based interfaces for model, data and results
USEtox is a scientific model under continuous development, for convenience implemented in a macro-enabled spreadsheet workbook with various sheets for organizing model inputs, calculations of fate, exposure and effect aspects, and results and with VBA code to allow for batch calculations and other semi-automated operations. In its current form, USEtox accommodates mostly environmental scientists and impact assessment practitioners, while it lacks a state-of-the-art interface that allows for easier application by its broad user community.
USEtox is currently being reprogrammed into a convenient and state-of-the-art open access web tool that allows to run model simulations, let users adapt and implement model input data, and generate and interpret results for various applications from life cycle assessment (LCA) and high-throughput risk screening (HTS) to chemical substitution and safe and sustainable-by-design (SSbD).
Have a look at the USEtox web demonstrator¹ for a glimpse of what the web version of the model will offer. [¹The figure shows a screenshot of the web demonstrator front page]
