Environmental risk assessment of chemicals in local forest-wood supply chain

The aim of this work was to elaborate a method to assess environmental risk arising from chemical use in wood - furniture supply chain, encompassing also forest activities. Forest-based and related industry sector is one of the most important in the EU, representing some 10% of the manifacturing industries. Forest management activities, wood preservation and preparation processes have a possible role in chemical emission. Particularly, during wood preservation practices, risk of wood preservatives and heavy metals transfers and impacts into the aquatic and soil environments has been reported. Pesticide emission could take part during forest management pratices. Furthermore, emission of VOC in air may occur in wood preparation phase. The methodological approach is preliminary applied to the specific case of a forest-wood supply chain of an experimental area located in Lombardia region (Val d’Intelvi). The whole supply chain is here characterized and the most relevant phases in an ecotoxicological point of view identified, trough Life Cycle Assessment as a tool to predict the impacts of each stage of productive processes. Starting from a specific conceptual model the risk of each phase is determined.