Title: A literature review assessing awareness of environmental sustainability in dentistry
Abstract:
Background and Aims: Climate change is currently the most pressing issue facing the planet, it is estimated to cause two hundred and fifty thousand deaths per year from 2030 to 2050 (World Health Organisation, 2023). The healthcare industry plays a large role in greenhouse gas emissions, including the dental sector. This paper will review how aware dental professionals, dental students and the public are of sustainability in dentistry. It will also highlight some key methods of improving this.
Methods: Three international databases were searched to identify relevant papers using the Boolean search string ‘carbon emission’ OR ‘environment*’ OR ‘sustainab*’ OR ‘climate change’, which were all combined with dentist. The results were manually sorted to include papers which focused on awareness of sustainability in dentistry.
Results: 11 papers were included in this review. They all gathered information on awareness of environmental sustainability in dentistry (ESD) and attitudes to reducing the impact of dentistry on the environment. There was generally little awareness of ESD but high levels of positive attitudes surrounding willingness to change.
Conclusion: The papers show that ESD awareness is low mostly due to barriers such as lack of education surrounding the topic. The strong positive attitudes towards importance of ESD implies that the removal of these barriers would lead to changes being made to reduce the carbon footprint of the dental industry. Some of the main methods to facilitate change are through reducing carbon emissions from travel and incorporating ESD into dental schools’ curriculum.
