Responsible decision-making seeks to minimize negative impacts while balancing environmental, economic, and social factors.

TRACI is an environmental impact assessment tool. It provides characterization factors for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA), industrial ecology, and sustainability metrics. Characterization factors quantify the potential impacts that inputs and releases have on specific impact categories in common equivalence units. Impact categories include: 

• ozone depletion,
• climate change,
• acidification,
• eutrophication,
• smog formation,
• human health impacts, and
• ecotoxicity.

Resource uses of fossil fuels are also characterized.

Users of TRACI include LCIA practitioners and researchers. TRACI can be applied to processes, products, facilities, companies and communities. TRACI can be updated as advances in LCIA research occur.

Accessing TRACI

TRACI 2.1 was developed using Microsoft Excel 2013.  Download the latest version of TRACI 2.1 (XLSX)(3 pp, 1 MB) .  To receive notices when TRACI is revised or updated, e-mail your name and address to traci@epa.gov.

User Manual

Bare, J. C. Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts (TRACI), Version 2.1 - User’s Manual; EPA/600/R-12/554 2012.

Resources

Bare, J. C.; Norris, G. A.; Pennington, D. W.; McKone, T., TRACI – The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts. Journal of Industrial Ecology 2003, 6, (3), 49-78.

Bare, J., TRACI 2.0: The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts 2.0. Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy 2011, 13, (5).