Professional Summary
Professor Jolliet's research and teaching programs aim to assess environmental risks and impacts of chemicals and of innovative technologies. He co-initiated the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program)/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative and is the scientific manager of its Life Cycle Impact Assessment program. He is editor and reviewer for several scientific journals.
Olivier Jolliet obtained a Master's degree, and a Ph.D. in building physics in 1988 at the EPFL. He worked as a postdoc at the Silsoe Research Institute (GB) and as a visiting scholar at MIT (USA) and Berkeley. Between 1998 and 2005, he was assistant professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, heading the Industrial Ecology & Life Cycle Systems Group. In 2005, Olivier Jolliet was appointed as Associate Professor at the University of Michigan and is one of the founding members of the Center for Risk Sciences.
Courses Taught
EHS508: Principles of Risk Assessment
Syllabus (PDF)
EHS600: Professional Perspectives in Environmental Health
Syllabus (PDF)
EHS672: Life cycle assessment: Human health and environmental impacts
Syllabus (PDF)
Education
Ph.D., Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), 1988
M.S., Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), 1983
Research Interest & Projects
Prof. Jolliet's research and teaching programs aims to provide the scientific knowledge for assessing environmental risks and impacts of chemicals, in order: (1) to develop a flexible risk assessment framework, enabling specialist to contribute to an interdisciplinary comparative approach, from chemical emissions to risks & impacts, (2) to model population-based exposure and intake fractions for outdoor and indoor chemical emissions in a consistent way, (3) to assess the life cycle risks, impacts and benefits related to new technologies and materials in order to prevent emissions and guide the development of these technologies,
Indoor intake fraction (Yvan Wenger): Prediction of the intake fraction for indoor air emissions in a consistent way to outdoor intake fraction, i.e. the fraction of the emission that is ingested or inhaled by the world population (Bennett et al., 2002). This research opens very interesting perspectives to account for the different removal pathways in buildings that are air renewal, inside degradation, and surface adsorption and degradation. This opens the way to treat occupational and worker exposure in a consistent way with other exposure pathways. The modeling approach will be complemented by experimental inputs on e.g. real-time monitoring of workplace contaminants.
Multiscale multi-media model (Cedric Wannaz): Creation of an adaptive multimedia model determining intake fractions at local (1km grid around the emission source), regional (200km grid within the continent of emission) and continental (world divided in continents) levels. Special emphasis is given to further develop modeling of exposure in the food chain linked to highest intake fractions and high level of uncertainties. This research builds up on the Impact 2002 model, a spatial multimedia (air, water, soil, sediment) model, enabling one to calculate the intake fraction and to analyse the spatial variations in toxic impacts over Europe.
Human health risks and impacts: Further improvement in the quantification of chemical risk is linked to better understanding of mechanistic effects of toxics in humans. Intake fraction will be extended consistently to a new metric accounting for uptake and transport within the body, accounting for toxicokinetics. This is essential for the correct assessment of multipathway exposure, when route-to-route extrapolation is needed due to lack of toxicity data for a certain exposure route. Dose-response information will be further expanded and applied to the comparative risk assessment of e.g pesticides compared to substances naturally occurring in food.
New material and of technological solutions for sustainability: Traditional Life cycle approaches are being extended by coupling them with Life Cycle Cost modelling for materials production, and component manufacturing. We will take advantage from the fact that material production and component manufacturing is composed of a limited set of processes that can be modelled in terms of labor, costs and environmental interventions. To support public policy in the domain of waste management or site remediation, existing knowledge is being extended to define the trade-off between treatments, as a function of e.g. the value of recycled/treated product (avoided burden), the magnitude of direct emissions during treatment and the transport requirements to the recycling or treatment facilities.
Socially responsible Investments: To support corporate managers and to advice investors, a quantitative evaluation of the overall life cycle environmental performances of companies is being developed, consistently with economic performances. Specific indicators are identified to cover the main impacts in the life cycle in order to provide guidance for company rating and socially responsible investments.
Selected Publications
Hauschild, M, Huijbregts, M., Jolliet, O., Margni, M., MacLeod, M., van de Meent, D., Rosenbaum, R. and McKone, T. (2008). Building a model based on scientific consensus for Life Cycle Impact Assessment of chemicals: The search for harmony and parsimony Environmental Science and Technology, 42(19), 7032-7036.
Rosenbaum, R., Bachmann, T., Huijbregts, M., Jolliet, O., Juraske, R., Koehler, A., Larsen, H., MacLeod, M., Margni, M. McKone, T., Payet, J., Schuhmacher, M., van de Meent, D. and Hauschild, M."" (2008). USEtox - The UNEP-SETAC toxicity model: recommended characterisation factors for human toxicity and freshwater ecotoxicity in Life Cycle Impact Assessment. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 7, 532-546.
Milbrath M O, Wenger Y, Chang C-W, Emond C, Garabrant D, Gillespie BW and Jolliet O (2008). Apparent half-lives of dioxins, furans, and PCBs as a function of age, body fat, smoking status, and breastfeeding EHP, 116, Online first.
Franzblau A, Hedgeman E, Chen Q, Lee S-Y, Adriaens P, Demond A, Garabrant D, Gillespie B, Hong B, Jolliet O, Lepkowski J, Luksemburg W, Maier M, Wenger Y (2008). Human Exposure to Dioxins from Clay: A Case Report Environmental Health Perspectives, 116, 238-242.
Scharnhorst, W., Ludwig, C., Wochele, J., Jolliet, O. (2007). Heavy metal partitioning from electronic scrap during thermal End-of-Life treatment Science of the Total Environment, 2-3, 576-584.
Jolliet, O. and Hauschild, M. (2005). The influence of the intermittent character of rain on fate and long range transport of air organic pollutants. Environmental Science & Technology, 39(12), 4513-4522.
Pennington, D.W., Margni, M., Amman, C. and Jolliet, O. (2005). Multimedia fate and human intake modeling: spatial versus non-spatial insights for chemical emissions in Western Europe. Environmental Science & Technology, 39(4), 1119-1128.
Houillon, G. and Jolliet, O. (2005). Life cycle assessment of processes for the treatment of waste water urban sludge: energy and global warming analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 13(3), 287-299.
Margni, M., Pennington, D.W., Bennett, D.H. and Jolliet, O. (2004). Cyclic exchanges and level of coupling between environmental media: intermedia feedback in multimedia fate models. Environmental Science & Technology, 38(20), 5450-5457.
Margni, M., Pennington, D.W., Amman, C. and Jolliet, O. (2004). Evaluating multimedia/multipathway model intake fraction estimates usuing POP emission and monitoring data. Environmental Pollution, 128(1-2), 263-277.
|
Site Menu
back to top