Medicine and Healthcare Sustainability
- ORGEL
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Healthcare is essential for human well-being, but it exerts significant environmental pressures that contribute to climate change, pollution, and resource depletion. These impacts arise from energy-intensive operations, supply chains, waste generation, and pharmaceuticals. The sector accounts for about 5% of global emissions, and 10% in some developed nations. This footprint exacerbates global challenges and indirectly harms public health, leading to an estimated loss of 388,000 disability-adjusted life years in the US in 2018 due to associated pollution.
Hospitals require constant energy for HVAC and the associated power-generation drives climate-related health risks, such as extreme weather events that disrupt care delivery and increase costs for disaster response. The sector releases pollutants like PM2.5, ozone, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide, stemming from energy use and medical waste incineration. In the US, the healthcare sector contributes to 12% of acid rain, and 10% of smog formation, leading to respiratory diseases, cardiovascular issues, and premature deaths.
Hospitals are generating up to 14,000 tons of waste every day in the US, a quarter of which are plastic single-use items like packaging and devices. Improper disposal leads to microplastics infiltrating ecosystems, water sources, and human bodies themselves. This causes oxidative stress, inflammation, and endocrine disruption. These impacts are linked to infertility, cancer, and developmental disorders. Also, incinerated medical waste releases dioxins and other toxins into the air.
Some pharmaceuticals are excreted into wastewater without being changed, contaminating rivers, groundwater, and agricultural land. Hospital effluents are often untreated separately from urban sewage and introducing antibiotics, cytotoxins, and heavy metals like mercury, fosters antimicrobial resistance and ecosystem disruption.
Amid these challenges, progress can be found in well-motivated hospital systems. One success story is Providence Health System and the environmental work led by Elizabeth Schenk, who was a caregiver for 30 years there before leading sustainability efforts for the last 5 years. Reducing waste by 25% is an admirable achievement in the sector and they plan to double that reduction by 2030. From 2019 to 2024, Scope 1 emissions reductions were substantial - 18%. Particular attention is being paid to nitrous oxide and anesthesia-related emissions, categories where opportunities are more abundant than grid electricity savings.
While this exception is notable, the irony of the story is that environmentally harmful healthcare operations create customers, which in turn pay for continued operations, perpetuating the cycle.
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