ProScale as a Tool for Organisational Chemical Footprint Assessment: A case study of Dellner Couplers AB

Abstract

Current organisational chemical management practices lack harmonisation between actual toxicological impacts, regulation and operational feasibility. Existing approaches often maintain a narrow focus where the life cycle perspective is missing, increasing the risk of burden shifting. ProScale is a risk-based chemical footprinting tool which quantifies toxicity throughout a product’s life cycle. In this study, the potential of ProScale as a tool for developing an organisational chemical footprint is investigated. The overall aim is to evaluate whether the ProScale method is a sufficiently simple yet informative tool to assess toxicity impact to be implemented by organisations to use for decision-making. Furthermore, the research explores whether this serves as a practical pathway away from current fragmented chemical management practices towards a science-based, organisational chemical footprint and whether this is useful to organisations. To address these aims, a case study was conducted in which ProScale was applied to the chemical portfolio of Dellner, a train coupler manufacturer. While the results clearly demonstrate that ProScale successfully can be applied to quantify the chemical footprint of an organisation, the transition from a product-specific focus demanded several methodological adaptations to the tool. The findings indicate that a ProScale developed organisational chemical footprint indeed is useful for chemical management. However, the method needs further development to be practically feasible for internal use and decision-making support. The results indicate that the method used in the present study may have too many uncertainties regarding data collection and interpretations of inputs to