Carbon footprint and associated costs of asthma exacerbation care among UK adults
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction Asthma exacerbations are a primary driver of costs and health impacts from asthma. Despite research suggesting that asthma care has a disproportionate carbon footprint, emissions costs are not considered when evaluating its societal burden. To advance the understanding of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with asthma, we estimated the carbon footprint and associated costs of asthma exacerbation care by severity level among UK adults.Methods Guidelines for asthma exacerbation treatment in UK adults were reviewed by severity level: mild, moderate, and severe/life-threatening. Components of care for each severity were evaluated for GHG emission potential and key drivers were identified. Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions of drivers were sourced from published literature and combined to estimate the carbon footprint per exacerbation, by severity level. Emissions were scaled up to the annual UK adult population based on the annual number of exacerbations at each severity. Costs associated with emissions were estimated using the UK government’s 2020 nontraded price of carbon, at ₤71 per tonne CO2e (tCO2e).Results Overall, emissions drivers for exacerbations were medical services, including patient-travel, and quick-relief inhalers. The annual number of mild, moderate, and severe/life-threatening asthma exacerbations among UK adults were 118.9 M, 5.5 M, and 2.4 M. Associated annual carbon footprints were estimated to be 83,455 tCO2e, 192,709 tCO2e, and 448,037 tCO2e for mild, moderate, and severe/life-threatening exacerbations, respectively, with a total of 724,201 tCO2e. Total annual emissions costs from exacerbation care were £51.3 M; ₤5.9 M, ₤13.6 M, and ₤31.7 M for mild, moderate, and severe/life-threatening exacerbations, respectively.Conclusion GHG emissions from asthma exacerbation management were the highest for severe/life-threatening events, followed by moderate exacerbations. Treatment to reduce the severity and occurrence of exacerbations, such as effective, long-term control therapy via lower-emission dry powder inhalers (DPIs), can help mitigate asthma care emissions. For mild exacerbations, the use of DPIs can eliminate associated emissions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".