What Is the Carbon Footprint of Your Sleep Apnea Treatment?

Even at the initial stage, an oral appliance has a much smaller carbon footprint than a CPAP machine. The CPAP machine includes an electric motor (although small), as well as electric cords, other electronic components, and the housing. Although these are relatively small appliances nowadays (typically less than five pounds), they are still much larger than an oral appliance (less than a pound), which is made almost entirely of plastic in most models. On top of the CPAP machine, you have to account for the hoses and mask, which themselves rival the manufacturing carbon emissions of the oral appliance.

In addition, CPAP machines are often loaded with accessories to make them reasonable to use. This includes humidifiers, heaters, and other accessories.

Higher carbon emissions for CPAP might be reasonable if they lasted longer than oral appliances, but that’s not the case. Both typically last about 3-5 years (and insurance companies will often only pay to replace them this frequently), which means that every replacement cycle further increases the carbon emissions related to your CPAP machine.

Of course, it’s only the CPAP machine that actually lasts 3-5 years. Other parts of the CPAP treatment device generally need to be replaced much more often. Equipment like masks, hoses, straps, pads, and filters wear out relatively quickly, and might need to be replaced as often as 3-6 months! That’s up to 20 replacements of this additional equipment that will need to be done over the course of the machine’s life. Even if each accessory replacement results in fewer carbon emissions than replacing an oral appliance, you’re replacing them so much more frequently.

And, of course, there’s the issue that CPAP uses electricity, while an oral appliance does not. Fortunately, a CPAP machine is a fairly frugal appliance, using an average of about 45 W. If you use your CPAP machine for 8 hours a night, that comes out to 360 Wh per night. That adds up over time, though, turning into 131.5 kWh per year, or 657.5 kWh over the lifetime of your CPAP machine. If we consider that the each kWh is associated with 1.55 pounds of CO2 in Michigan, that’s a little over half a ton of CO2 excess emissions over the life of one CPAP machine. When we add that up over your expected lifespan, a man diagnosed with sleep apnea at age 45 might generate about 3.5 tons more CO2 using CPAP than they would using an oral appliance, even without the additional emissions related to manufacturing and accessories for CPAP.