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Tuesday, January 6, 2026 DALY USEtox human toxicity LCA methodology health impact assessment comparative toxicity assessment CTUh epidemiological metrics chemical safety disability-adjusted life years
How USEtox Human Toxicity Assessment Borrows Epidemiological Language for Comparative Indices. In public health, DALY means "years of life lost"—a measure of real disease burden in populations. In LCA, "DALY" appears in USEtox scores as a comparative lifecycle index with 1-3 orders of magnitude uncertainty. Same acronym, fundamentally incompatible meanings. When toxicologists see "15.3 DALY," they interpret real health impacts. What the score actually represents: a persistence-intake-toxicity ranking metric that cannot answer "Is this safe?"