A risk-based life cycle assessment of OPAL petrol and BP regular unleaded petrol

Liu, Jingjing (2010) A risk-based life cycle assessment of OPAL petrol and BP regular unleaded petrol. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

[English] PDF - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Download (5MB)

Abstract

Gasoline sniffing has been a significant health issue in remote communities in many countries, such as Labrador in Canada. In order to reduce the adverse impacts caused by gasoline sniffing on human health, a new less toxic blend of gasoline (OPAL) produced by BP Australia is proposed to be introduced. This study focuses on the estimation of impacts and risks of OPAL on human health and the environment and its comparison to BP regular unleaded petrol (ULP). A risk-based life cycle analysis was conducted. The results show that OPAL is identified to have less adverse impacts on both the environment and human health. In addition, the risks to human health by using OPAL can be regarded as negligible. Moreover, compared to ULP, OPAL proved to have less risk to human health both in carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic categories. Therefore, it can be predicted that the introduction of OPAL would significantly help to reduce the harmful effects caused by gasoline sniffing in remote areas.

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