Health and environmental impacts of drinking water choices in Barcelona, Spain: A modelling study
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- dc.contributor.author Villanueva, Cristina M.
- dc.contributor.author Garfí, Marianna
- dc.contributor.author Milà, Carles
- dc.contributor.author Olmos, Sergio
- dc.contributor.author Ferrer, Ivet
- dc.contributor.author Tonne, Cathryn
- dc.date.accessioned 2022-05-17T05:55:20Z
- dc.date.available 2022-05-17T05:55:20Z
- dc.date.issued 2021
- dc.description.abstract 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.
- dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
- dc.identifier.citation Villanueva CM, Garfí M, Milà C, Olmos S, Ferrer I, Tonne C. Health and environmental impacts of drinking water choices in Barcelona, Spain: A modelling study. Sci Total Environ. 2021 Nov 15;795:148884. DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148884
- dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148884
- dc.identifier.issn 0048-9697
- dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/53098
- dc.language.iso eng
- dc.publisher Elsevier
- dc.relation.ispartof Sci Total Environ. 2021 Nov 15;795:148884
- dc.rights © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
- dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- dc.subject.keyword Bottled water
- dc.subject.keyword Drinking water
- dc.subject.keyword Health impact assessment
- dc.subject.keyword Life cycle assessment
- dc.subject.keyword Treatment
- dc.subject.keyword Trihalomethanes
- dc.title Health and environmental impacts of drinking water choices in Barcelona, Spain: A modelling study
- dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
- dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion