Environmental impacts of lead industry waste management in Thailand using life cycle assessment (LCA)

Abstract Lead is one of the most utilized non-ferrous metals. In Thailand, lead-related industries primarily consist of lead smelting and lead-acid battery production. Lead is a hazardous heavy metal that can accumulate and cause adverse effects on human health and ecosystem. Thus, proper waste management in the lead industry is crucial. This research investigated quantity and flow pathways of wastes generated by the lead industry in Thailand. It also assessed environmental impacts of waste management using material flow analysis and life cycle assessment via STAN and SimaPro software. Results revealed that from 2017 to 2020, sludge containing hazardous substances from wastewater treatment (waste code 19 08) had the highest quantity, followed by slag from lead production (waste code 10 04) and containers contaminated with hazardous substances (waste code 15 01), comprising 45.02%, 15.84%, and 7.42%, respectively. The majority of wastes were managed under code 073 (secure landfill of stabilized and/or solidified wastes), followed by codes 049 (other recycling methods—lead remelting) and 044 (use as raw material substitution in cement industrial furnace), representing 34.56%, 33.14%, and 15.99%. The study on environmental impact, focusing on waste disposal (code 07), revealed predominant impacts on freshwater and marine ecotoxicity, human carcinogenic toxicity, and human non-carcinogenic toxicity. The waste management practice in 2020 was set as a baseline for comparison with alternative waste management scenarios as it represents the most recent data available. The scenarios that involves recycling some waste and reintroducing lead slag into the production process were found to reduce the most environmental impacts. Conversely, waste management by incineration all waste had the highest environmental impact.