Health care has a massive carbon footprint. These doctors are trying to change that

Inside an operating room at Magee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, Noe Woods stands next to a black operating table wearing blue scrubs.

Woods, an obstetrician-gynecologist, knows this room well.

“Over the past 14 years, I’ve had many surgeries in this room. I’ve probably removed uteruses, polyps, ovaries, ectopic pregnancies, things like that,” Woods said.

Operating rooms are the heart of a hospital’s operations, but they’re also at the root of the problem Woods and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) are trying to solve: how to reduce carbon pollution.

“Although operating rooms are a fairly small portion of a hospital’s physical footprint, they generate a tremendous amount of waste,” Woods said.

Hospitals are the biggest carbon polluters that almost no one thinks about. The American medical system isEstimated 8.5%Total carbon dioxide emissions of the country. The sector emits climate-warming pollution through a variety of sources, including energy used to operate facilities, transportation, products, and waste.

I’ve known Woods for 20 years, but only recently learned about her work on climate change at UPMC, Western Pennsylvania’s largest hospital system.

Woods struggled for years to get her colleagues to focus on human-driven climate change. “At first it was very slow and very strange and alternative,” she said. “A lot of people pushed me and said, ‘Oh, I’m so glad you did that.'”

Eventually the forest burned out. But two years ago, she realized that several other doctors at her UPMC were also interested in climate change.they formed Clinicians for climate actionhas rapidly grown to more than 500 physicians, nurses, and other staff within UPMC’s 40-hospital system.

“Right now it’s like everyone looks at each other and says, okay, now we really need to do something, because the world is on fire,” Woods said.

Group members recently asked UPMC to: Phase out desflurane3,700 times more anesthetic gas more powerful than carbon dioxide. We also reduced food waste in the cafeteria and reduced single-use items.

For example, UPMC Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh has switched to reusable fingertip sensors to measure blood oxygen levels. The idea came from Isabella Angelelli, a pediatrician and co-chair of the Climate Change Group at Children’s Hospital.

“Children’s hospitals see 180,000 patients a year. That’s $1 million in the trash,” she says. In the months since she switched to reusable sensors, Angelelli says her sensor consumption has decreased by 63%. “We save thousands of dollars every month.”

Angelelli said it’s easy to get hospital staff on board with the idea of ​​reducing waste. “It all comes from people at the bedside coming up to us and saying, ‘It breaks my heart to throw all this in the trash,'” Angelelli said. “Nurses would come in and say, ‘Please come in, I’m totally admitted.’ Everyone wants to be a part of this.”

Across the country, healthcare workers continue to battle the industry’s massive carbon footprint.

Jody Sherman, associate professor of anesthesiology and epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine, said unnecessary procedures are part of the problem. She said they improve hospital profits but not patient health.

Sherman said hospitals are also overusing disposable supplies to meet their infection prevention obligations.

“We’re at the point where we’re retiring complex robotic surgical instruments,” Sherman said.

In addition to high-end scalpels, blood pressure cuffs, bed linen, pillows, and patient gowns are also thrown away in the trash.Manufacturing, packaging, and shipping each requires energy, most of which is still comes from fossil fuels — The main cause of global warming.

“These are all becoming disposable, disposable,” Sherman said. “There’s a lot of waste.”

An influential national hospital accreditation organization, Joint committeewithdraws proposal to require facilities to count emissions After the hospital files a complaint. For the time being, this committee will Voluntary certification In sustainable medicine.

Sherman believes a national mandate to reduce emissions is the only way to solve America’s health care providers’ massive carbon footprint. But for now, we only have voluntary measures like UPMC’s.

UPMC signed White House pledge Noe Woods and her colleagues aim to halve carbon emissions by 2030 after collecting more than 200 signatures letter Promote climate change countermeasures.

“We didn’t advertise it. We just emailed it to people we thought would promote it,” Woods said. “And, you know, within a week and a half, we had enough signatures to send it.”

/ Reed Frazier/Allegheny Front

/

Reed Frazier/Allegheny Front

The group also called on UPMC to establish a sustainability office to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Woods said she was surprised that UPMC agreed and actually established a sustainability center.

“that [the center] The name is written on the door. We have employees,” Woods said. “They’re calculating things. It’s unbelievable.”

The office’s most recent hire is an energy engineer who will help find ways to reduce UPMC’s energy use and source more energy from renewable sources.

Woods said there is rapidly growing momentum among his colleagues to advance climate action.

“Doctors don’t often volunteer their time for a cause, continually, relentlessly, meeting after meeting. They show up with a new idea, then the next thing they’re interested in. People show up, and then another person comes,” Woods said. “Everyone cares.”

Copyright 2023 Allegheny Front. For more information, please visit.