The Blood Wedding Ring, Assessing the Life Cycle Lives Lost in Gold Jewelry Production

Visa enkel post
dc.contributor.authorParsmo, Rasmus
dc.contributor.departmentChalmers tekniska högskola / Institutionen för energi och miljösv
dc.contributor.departmentChalmers University of Technology / Department of Energy and Environmenten
dc.date.accessioned2019-07-03T13:42:17Z
dc.date.available2019-07-03T13:42:17Z
dc.date.issued2015
dc.description.abstractThis study investigates the human health impact of gold jewelry during its entire life cycle. Gold has many negative impacts on human health during its life cycle, such as emissions and accidents during different stages in the life cycle. There are also indications that mining of different minerals leads to conflicts and that minerals, such as gold, are used for financing military activities resulting in people getting killed, injured or displaced. Especially the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is associated with conflict gold. Consequently, gold produced in the DRC is the main focus of this study, while gold produced in Sweden and South Africa are included for comparison.The main method of this thesis is an attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) with an expanded social perspective. The disability-adjusted life years (DALY) is the indicator, and the results are quantified for the amount of gold in one typical wedding ring and per kg of gold. The indicator DALY is chosen since it allows for considering different types of causes of death and impairment, including conflicts, occupational hazards and environmental hazards. The aim is not to reach an exact figure of how many years of life that are lost, but rather to evaluate the magnitude of different processes. The three types of human health impacts that are quantified in this study are: impacts from environmental emissions, impacts from work environment accidents, and impacts from conflict. About 0.4 years of life were lost per wedding ring for gold produced in the DRC, which is several orders of magnitude larger than the impact of gold produced in South Africa and Sweden. The calculated number for life years lost is very high for such a small amount of gold, creating credibility for the title of this tudy: “the blood wedding ring”. The impact from the conflict is several orders of magnitude larger than the impact in any other process. If the impact assessment result from the conflict is excluded from the results, the emissions occurring at the extraction and processing of gold instead had the greatest impact, several orders of magnitude larger than any other process. In particular, mercury emissions to air had a high impact on human health during the processing of gold in artisanal mining in the DRC. The other processes have more minor impacts on human health. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to evaluate data gaps and uncertainties. These analyses in general showed that the results of the impact assessment are reasonable. The overall conclusion is that even though the results are uncertain, the conflict’s impact on human health is still several magnitudes larger than those of all other processes evaluated in the study.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12380/218967
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofseriesReport - Division of Environmental Systems Analysis, Chalmers University of Technology : 2015:11
dc.setspec.uppsokLifeEarthScience
dc.subjectAnnan geovetenskap och miljövetenskap
dc.subjectAnnan naturvetenskap
dc.subjectOther Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
dc.subjectOther Natural Sciences
dc.titleThe Blood Wedding Ring, Assessing the Life Cycle Lives Lost in Gold Jewelry Production
dc.type.degreeExamensarbete för masterexamensv
dc.type.degreeMaster Thesisen
dc.type.uppsokH
local.programmeIndustrial ecology (MPTSE), MSc
Ladda ner
Original bundle
Visar 1 - 1 av 1
Bild (thumbnail)
Namn:
218967.pdf
Storlek:
4.09 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Beskrivning:
Fulltext
Ladda ner
Samling
Examensarbeten för masterexamen