Department for Sanitary Engineering, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Zdravstvena Pot 5, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Int J Environ Health Res. 2013;23(1):66-75. doi: 10.1080/09603123.2012.699030. Epub 2012 Jul 10.
Bioethanol and biodiesel as potential substitutes for fossil fuels in the transportation sector have been analyzed for environmental suitability. However, there could be impacts on human health during the production, therefore adverse health effects have to be analyzed. The aim of this study is to analyze to what health risk factors humans are exposed to in the production of biofuels and what the size of the health effects is. A health impact assessment expressed as disability adjusted life years (DALYs) was conducted in SimaPro 7.1 software. The results show a statistically significant lower carcinogenic impact of biofuels (p < 0.05) than fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the impact of organic respirable compounds is smaller for fossil fuels (p < 0.05) than for biofuels. Analysis of inorganic compounds like PM₁₀,₂.₅, SO₂ or NO(x) shows some advantages of sugar beet bioethanol and soybean biodiesel production (p < 0.05), although production of sugarcane bioethanol shows larger impacts of respirable inorganic compounds than for fossil fuels (p < 0.001). Although liquid biofuels are made of renewable energy sources, this does not necessary mean that they do not represent any health hazards.
生物乙醇和生物柴油作为交通运输领域化石燃料的潜在替代品，其环境适宜性已得到分析。然而，在生产过程中可能会对人类健康产生影响，因此必须分析其对健康的不良影响。本研究旨在分析在生物燃料生产过程中人类面临哪些健康风险因素，以及健康影响的大小。在 SimaPro 7.1 软件中进行了健康影响评估，用残疾调整生命年（DALYs）表示。结果表明，生物燃料的致癌影响明显低于化石燃料（p<0.05）。同时，对于有机可吸入化合物，化石燃料的影响小于生物燃料（p<0.05）。对 PM₁₀、₂.₅、SO₂ 或 NO(x) 等无机化合物的分析表明，甜菜生物乙醇和大豆生物柴油生产具有一定的优势（p<0.05），尽管甘蔗生物乙醇的生产会导致可吸入无机化合物的影响大于化石燃料（p<0.001）。尽管液体生物燃料由可再生能源制成，但这并不意味着它们不会对健康造成危害。
