Overcoming the difficulties of accurate hazard assessment for electronic devices: A life cycle hazard projection approach

Hazard assessment tools offer the capability to determine the future hazardous impacts associated with an emerging technology; however, choosing among these tools to make a hazard assessment is difficult and can introduce biases. Instead, using multiple tools for the same hazard assessment can provide a more comprehensive study, but can produce conflicting results. To overcome these conflicts a new life cycle hazard assessment approach is introduced: life cycle hazard projection (LCHP). By projecting the results of a single hazard assessment into other life cycle stages, one is capable of managing conflicting results and providing a deeper assessment. To demonstrate the utility of LCHP, a case study is devised using The Green Screen™ for Safer Chemicals and Toxic Potential Indicator hazard tools to assess emerging copper-indium-gallium-selenium-sulfide photovoltaics (CIGS). In this study, the use of LCHP improved overall hazard assessment and made the conflicting results between the two tools disappear.