Suchergebnisse

Quantitative evidence of health and environmental tradeoffs between individuals' drinking water choices is needed to inform decision-making. We evaluated health and environmental impacts of drinking water choices using health impact and life cycle assessment (HIA, LCA) methodologies applied to data from Barcelona, Spain. We estimated the health and environmental impacts of four drinking water scenarios for the Barcelona population: 1) currently observed drinking water sources; a complete shift to 2) tap water; 3) bottled water; or 4) filtered tap water. We estimated the local bladder cancer incidence attributable to trihalomethane (THM) exposure, based on survey data on drinking water sources, THM levels, published exposure-response functions, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) from the Global Burden of Disease 2017. We estimated the environmental impacts (species lost/year, and resources use) from waste generation and disposal, use of electricity, chemicals, and plastic to produce tap or bottled drinking water using LCA. The scenario where the entire population consumed tap water yielded the lowest environmental impact on ecosystems and resources, while the scenario where the entire population drank bottled water yielded the highest impacts (1400 and 3500 times higher for species lost and resource use, respectively). Meeting drinking water needs using bottled or filtered tap water led to the lowest bladder cancer DALYs (respectively, 140 and 9 times lower than using tap water) in the Barcelona population. Our study provides the first attempt to integrate HIA and LCA to compare health and environmental impacts of individual water consumption choices. Our results suggest that the sustainability gain from consuming water from public supply relative to bottled water may exceed the reduced risk of bladder cancer due to THM exposure from consuming bottled water in Barcelona. Our analysis highlights several critical data gaps and methodological challenges in quantifying integrated health and environmental impacts of drinking water choices. ; We acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the "Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa 2019–2023" Program (CEX2018-000806-S), and support from the Generalitat de Catalunya through the CERCA Program. We are grateful to the Government of Catalonia (Consolidated Research Group 2017 SGR 1029). MG (RYC-2016-20059) and CT (RYC-2015-17402) acknowledge the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Authors are also thankful to Andrea Arias and María Teresa Moreira (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain) for their contribution, to Iro Evlampidou for contributing to the conceptualization of the analysis, to Anna Gómez and Xavier Bartoll (Barcelona Public Health Agency, ASPB) for contributing with data on water quality water consumption from the Barcelona Health Survey 2016, and to Manolis Kogevinas and Natalie Mueller (ISGlobal) for their comments on the concept and analysis. ; Peer Reviewed ; Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::6 - Aigua Neta i Sanejament ; Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::12 - Producció i Consum Responsables ; Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::3 - Salut i Benestar ; Postprint (published version)