Carbon emissions from road transport on a national neonatal transport service: a retrospective observational study.

Abstract

We conducted a retrospective observational study of all transports conducted by our national neonatal transport service to estimate direct carbon emissions produced by the service in a 1 year time period. We investigated all parts of the journey for 501 transports-from 27 referring units to 15 receiving units. These transports covered a total of 110 305.4 km. As our vehicles report carbon emissions of 293-327 g/km, over the study period between 32.3 and 36.1 metric tonnes of carbon were directly produced by our neonatal transport service. Our carbon impact could be mitigated by the utilisation of alternative fuels, including hydrotreated vegetable oil.