Carbon emissions from a FIT versus a colonoscopy screening program – environmental impact of travel and waste
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Aims Environmental harms of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening have not been considered although their impact to planet and human health can be substantial. The aim was to compare carbon footprint generated by travel and waste of three CRC screening strategies. Methods We examined three hypothetical cohorts of 1000 screen eligible persons in the US participating in one of three CRC screening programs over a 10-year time horizon: a) primary colonoscopy, b) annual FIT, c) biennial FIT. Probabilities were obtained from publicly available data. Waste estimates were based on a 5-day audit at two hospitals. Environmental impact analysis was performed following ISO14040 standards. The main outcome of interest was the carbon footprint of travel and waste in each of these cohorts (expressed as kgCO2e) and when applied to all screen eligible persons in the US (expressed as tCO2e). Results The primary colonoscopy screening strategy generated the greatest carbon footprint (9,806 kgCO2e), followed by the annual FIT strategy (3,970 kgCO2e), and the biennial FIT strategy (2,202 kgCO2e). Compared to a colonoscopy screening program, an annual FIT program would reduce the carbon footprint by 60% and a biennial FIT program by 78% (table). Transitioning to a primary annual FIT based program in the US would reduce the carbon footprint by 5,360 tCO2e, and by 6,983 tCO2e for a biennial FIT program (equivalent of 5,100 and 6,600 transatlantic passenger flights avoided, respectively) ([ Table 1 ]). Table 1 Conclusions Switching from a primary colonoscopy CRC screening program to a FIT program would lower the carbon footprint related to travel and waste alone by at least 60%, which would be in line with the international goal of a 50% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Carbon footprint from travel and waste of three CRC screening strategies for cohorts of 1000 screen-eligible persons over a 10-year screening period and applied to all screen eligible persons in the US each year. Publication History Article published online: 14 April 2023 © 2023. European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. All rights reserved. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Rüdigerstraße 14, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany
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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 | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".