About HumanToll
HumanToll asks how much human life is in the things people buy, and answers only as far as public data and an explicit model allow.
HumanToll is a research project of Quiescence (quiescence.eu). It has no funding, earns no income and sells nothing; its method, sources and assumptions are published before any figure, and every figure it publishes carries its interval.
Where it stands
No estimate is published yet. The method, the sources and the ledger they feed are public; the figures are withheld until a validated run is published.
Who makes it
Quiescence, which one person runs. There is no institution behind it and no sponsor. Advanced access to its data is arranged by writing to info@quiescence.eu.
What it will not do
- Name a company, a brand or a person. The unit of analysis is an archetype and a supply chain.
- Say "caused by". Every figure is attributed to a supply chain under stated assumptions, with the method one click away.
- Call for a boycott. It shows why two products differ; what to do about it is the reader’s decision.
- Show a figure without its interval, or with more than two significant figures.
- Store anything about its readers. A basket stays in the reader’s browser, and a correction carries no name.
Whose data, on what terms
Every figure is built from public data, each source under its own licence, listed with its releases on the sources page. Where a licence needed a publisher’s permission for this use, the permission was asked for in writing and is filed with the project’s evidence:
- EXIOBASE 3 — EXIOBASE consortium, 2026-09-22
- WHO Global Health Estimates — World Health Organization, 2026-09-22
- IHME Global Burden of Disease — Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, 2026-09-24
How to cite
A figure is cited by its run, as the citation block beside it gives it: HumanToll <year>, run <id>, methodology v<version>, and the page’s address. The project itself: HumanToll, Quiescence, https://quiescence.eu/humantoll/.
For journalists: how to quote a figure, and six readings that are wrong →