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OECD Series on ESDs

What is an Emission Scenario Document?

How is an Emission Scenario Document developed?

Comments on published Emission Scenario Documents

Emission Scenario Documents under preparation

Categories used in the OECD Emission Scenario Documents

What is an Emission Scenario Document?
An Emission Scenario Documents (ESD) is a document that describes the sources, production processes, pathways and use patterns with the aim of quantifying the emissions (or releases) of a chemical into water, air, soil and/or solid waste. An ESD should ideally include all the following stages: (1) production, (2) formulation, (3) industrial use, (4) professional use, (5) private and consumer use, (6) service life of product/article, (7) recovery, and (8) waste disposal (incineration, landfill).ESDs are used in risk assessment of chemicals to establish the conditions on use and releases of the chemicals, that are the bases for estimating the concentration of chemicals in the environment.

ESDs have already been widely used in national and regional contexts. For example, European Chemicals Agency (ECHA)’s guidance document on environmental exposure estimation refers to existing ESDs including OECD ESDs and those developed by the European Commission before.  Some European countries have their own ESDs. The USEPA has developed a number of generic scenarios to be used as default release scenarios in risk assessment. The OECD Task Force on Exposure Assessment (former Task Force on Environmental Exposure Assessment) is developing ESDs at the OECD level, in order to make it possible to reflect conditions on production, use etc. that are different between countries, and to avoid duplicative efforts by Member countries and industry in gathering exposure information.
 
Other details about ESDs can be found in the Guidance Document on Emission Scenario Documents (2000) and the Complementing Guideline for Writing ESDs: The Life-Cycle Step "service-life" (2008).

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How is an ESD developed?
The first process for developing an OECD ESD is a submission of a project proposal from member countries. The proposal specifies the industry categories and/or use categories that the documents will cover.

Once approved by the Task Force on Exposure Assessment, the lead country drafts the document, and the draft will then be circulated to members of the Task Force for their comments. Taking the comments into account, the drafts are amended and published by the OECD.  
 
Comments on published ESDs
More than 30 ESDs have been published so far as OECD Series on ESDs. Users are encouraged to provide comments and new or updated information regarding emission estimation of chemicals outlined in these published ESDs to the Secretariat. The OECD Task Force on Exposure Assessment reviews the comments received and considers the revision of ESDs.

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ESDs under preparation
Projects to develop or update the following ESDs are currently on-going. (as of December 2012)

• Formulation and Application of Thermal and Carbonless Copy Paper 
• Chemical Vapour Deposition in the Semiconductor Industry
• Use of Adhesives
• Textile Dyeing
• Industrial use of industrial cleaners
• Case study on plastic additives (a complementing document to the existing ESD on Plastic Additives)
• Metals from waste disposal
• Application of Paint Solvent  to industrial coating (a complementing document or revision of existing ESD 22 Coating Industry)
• Wood preservatives (Revision of the ESD number 2 published in 2000)

Categories used in the OECD ESDs

For the development of OECD ESDs, industry categories and/or use categories shown below have been applied. Recently the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) developed more detailed descriptors for describing the use pattern of chemicals. Also the US and Canada developed harmonized use codes. The Task Force on Exposure Assessment is developed mapping tables between the two sets of use descriptors.

Industry categories

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Use Categories

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Permanent url: http://www.oecd.org/env/exposure/esd