Life Cycle Impact Assessment of Pesticides Removal from Water Using Nanofiltration and Reverse Osmosis

Given the environmental burden associated with pesticides, it is necessary to quantify their potential impacts and investigate impact mitigation alongside their removal. Most existing life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) studies lack direct experimental data on residual concentrations, limiting their ability to realistically assess the toxicity-related benefits of pesticide mitigation. This study addresses that gap by linking experimentally determined pesticide removal with LCIA. Three LCIA methods (Environmental Footprint (EF), TRACI, and ReCiPe) were used to evaluate pesticide impacts, as they reflect different global regulations and conditions, resulting in different potential impact estimates. Removal of atrazine, imidacloprid, metolachlor, and tebuconazole from tap water and groundwater was carried out using nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. The results showed 81–99% pesticide removal with RO membranes and 27–96% removal with NF membranes, depending on the pesticide. Freshwater ecotoxicity and human toxicity (cancer and non-cancer effects) were quantified for untreated matrices and compared to results obtained with NF and RO treatment data. The findings indicate that NF and RO treatment can reduce calculated pesticide toxicity impacts across the evaluated categories.