Industrial products

Product environmental life cycle analysis (LCA) is used for identifying and measuring the impact on the environment of industrial products. These EIAs consider technological activities used for various stages of the product: extraction of raw material for the product and for ancillary materials and equipment, through the production and use of the product, right up to the disposal of the product, the ancillary equipment and material.

Genetically modified plants

There are specific methods available to perform EIAs of genetically modified plants. Some of the methods are GMP-RAM, INOVA etc.

Fuzzy Arithmetic

EIA methods need specific parameters and variables to be measured to estimate values of impact indicators. However many of the environment impact properties cannot be measured on a scale e.g. landscape quality, lifestyle quality, social acceptance etc. and moreover these indicators are very subjective. Thus to assess the impacts we may need to take the help of information from similar EIAs, expert criteria, sensitivity of affected population etc. To treat this information, which is generally inaccurate, systematically, fuzzy arithmetic and approximate reasoning methods can be utilised. This is called as a fuzzy logic approach.

At the end of the project, an EIA should be followed by an audit. An EIA audit evaluates the performance of an EIA by comparing actual impacts to those that were predicted. The main objective of these audits is to make future EIAs more valid and effective. The two main considerations are: scientific - to check the accuracy of predictions and explain errors; management - to assess the success of mitigation in reducing impacts.

Exercise 4. Answer the following questions.

1. What does environmental impact assessment deal with?

2. What is the purpose of EIA?

3. When was EIA utilised for the first time and when it was legislated?

4. What is the name of EIA approach which focused on species in question?

5. Which EIA methods do you know?

6. What does LCA consider?

7. What are the purposes of EIA last step?

Exercise 5. Match the words to make collocations. Translate them.

extraction, to reduce, environmental impact, entire population, technical, species, to estimate, decision, life cycle, threatened species, genetically, lifestyle.

modified, evaluation, conservation, in question, values, assessment, analysis, maker, of raw material, of species, impacts, quality.

Exercise 6. Give all possible derivatives of the following words:

assess, decision, genetically, alternative, activity, various, to indicate, additional, value, proposal, to relate, study, specified, objective, information, systematically.

Exercise 7. Make up an annotation of the above text. The model is on page 13.

Exercise 8. Make up an abstract (a brief summary) of the above text. The model is on page 13.

Exercise 9. Expand the sentences using the words in brackets. Put these words into necessary forms.

1. urbanization result (land industrialization pollution in and)

2. they are (persistent insecticide cheap and produce synthetic to potent).

3. projects damages (disrupted modern community landscapes mining)

4. drainage can (streams acid cause damage to mine)

5. refers to (clay relative and soil proportion texture of sand silt)

6. pollutants can (of particle liquid in solid be or droplet form)

7. temperatures rise (from evaporate ground more as source water)

8. atmosphere (molecule more greenhouse contain today gas)

Exercise 10. What does this sentence define? Is it related with the theme of the main text?

Technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from raw material extraction through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and disposal or recycling.