Tool for Reduction and Assessment of Chemicals and Other Environmental Impacts (TRACI)
Responsible environmental decision-making seeks to minimize negative impacts while balancing environmental, economic, and social factors.
TRACI is an environmental impact assessment tool which provides characterization factors for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA), industrial ecology, and sustainability metrics and can be applied to processes, products, facilities, companies, and communities.
Characterization factors quantify the potential impacts that inputs and releases have on specific impact categories in common equivalence units. Impact categories include:
- ozone depletion,
- climate change,
- acidification,
- eutrophication,
- smog formation,
- human health impacts, and
- ecotoxicity.
Current research is focusing on spatially-specific photochemical oxidation formation characterization.
Accessing TRACI
EPA updated TRACI in 2021 to include spatially-specific eutrophication factors, which have been documented in the Henderson et. al paper below.
Download the latest version of site-generic characterization factors: TRACI ver 2.2 (xlsx)
Download the site-specific eutrophication characterization factors.
User Manual
Bare, J. C. Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts (TRACI), Version 2.1 - User’s Manual; EPA/600/R-12/554 2012.
Resources
Henderson, A.D., B. Niblick, H.E. Golden, and J.C. Bare. Modeling spatially resolved characterization factors for eutrophication potential in life cycle assessment. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 2021, 26: 1832 – 1846.
Bare, J. C.; Norris, G. A.; Pennington, D. W.; McKone, T., TRACI – The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts. Journal of Industrial Ecology 2003, 6, (3), 49-78.
Bare, J., TRACI 2.0: The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts 2.0. Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy 2011, 13, (5).