Regionalized chemical footprint method to identify aquatic ecotoxicity hotspots of hard disk drive rare-earth magnets.

ABSTRACT: The chemical footprint (ChF), which combines life cycle assessment (LCA) and quantitative risk assessment principles, shows promise for exploring localized toxicity impacts of manufacturing processes, which is not achievable with LCA alone. An updated ChF method was applied to the global annual production of a hard disk drive (HDD) rare-earth element (REE) magnet assembly, assuming a supply chain in East and Southeast Asia. Existing REE magnet assembly LCA inventories were combined with supplier manufacturing locations to create a cradle-to-gate spatial unit process inventory. Emissions from the electricity grid for each manufacturing site were downscaled to hydrobasins of interest using the Global Power Plant Database. The predicted no effect concentration (PNEC) was chosen as the ecotoxi

SUBMITTER: Frost K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10087400 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature