Advances, norms, and perspectives in product chemical footprint research

Abstract

The chemical footprint of a product is an important factor for evaluating human toxicity and determining ecotoxic effects caused by chemical pollutants in the entire production cycle and is the premise and effective means to carry out the identification, assessment, and control of chemical, environmental risk. The study reviewed the progress of research on chemical and product chemical footprints. It unified the key issues such as accounting boundaries, data lists, accounting methods, and result evaluation of product chemical footprint calculation. On this basis, we propose methods for evaluating product chemical footprints, providing a normative reference for enterprises and relevant research institutions. The future research is likely to obtain innovative results in the research and application of chemical footprint labels, research on characterization factor calculation methods for chemical substances, construction and standardization of chemical use, and emission database and promotion of a chemical-based guarantee mechanism for environmental management.