Why Bother?

Health care professionals are under a tremendous amount of pressure—cutbacks and staff reductions have forced health care staff to take on multiple job roles, cut costs, and reduce labor. Environmental stewardship has always seemed like a luxury. But a new focus on environmental compliance requirements and a trend in health care to become environmental leaders has gained momentum. Health care facilities are moving from asking why, to considering how to get this work done. But perhaps the leadership in your facility still need to be convinced…why should you bother?

The answer is simple. The products we purchase may be hazardous to work with and if disposed of improperly, may negatively impact the health of your local and global community. While medical waste treatment and waste disposal in general is a multi-billion dollar industry, most hospitals are not aware of the amounts of waste they generate or even how much they spend annually on disposal, not to mention the environmental impacts created in the process. There are practical, cost effective solutions to many of these issues. Working together, Practice Greenhealth helps you stretch your limited resources to get this work done, because clearly, there are better ways of doing business. Consider the following:

Why Mercury?

Mercury is a reproductive toxin and a potent neurotoxin. When staff dispose of mercury-containing devices such as fever thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, lab chemicals, and other products in an improper manner, mercury can leach into water supplies and be released into the air via landfill gas emissions. Experts estimate that medical and municipal waste incinerators are responsible for 30 percent of the total mercury emissions to air.

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Why Dioxin and other PBTs?

PBTs are persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemicals that are global priority pollutants. Two in particular – mercury and dioxin – are generated by the health care sector and have been targeted by Practice Greenhealth for elimination. Dioxin has been linked to reproductive and developmental defects, endometriosis, learning disabilities, endocrine disorders, and cancer. Dioxin is created when material containing large amounts of chlorine is subjected to extreme temperatures – either in manufacturing or through incineration. The health care sector directly produces dioxin by incinerating waste containing large amounts of chlorinated plastic (e.g., PVC – polyvinyl chloride). According to the Health Industry Manufacturers Association, PVC is found in 25% of all health care products. Practice Greenhealth focuses its efforts on choosing less toxic products, minimizing the amount of waste created, and finding alternative treatment technologies (other than incineration) for managing health care waste.

Why Waste?

Health care generates a dizzying, complex array and quantity of waste that may pose significant environmental challenges. Different waste should be treated differently: solid waste (trash), biohazards (sharps, red bag wastes), hazardous waste (chemicals, solvents, mercury), pharmaceuticals (chemotherapy drugs, narcotics – controlled substances), universal wastes (computers, batteries, fluorescent bulbs), recyclables (paper, cardboard, metal, glass, plastic), compostable waste (food and organic wastes), and radioactive waste.

Staff should be trained to manage their waste in a way that ensures patient and worker safety and minimizes potential environmental impacts. For example, when staff throw away non-contaminated waste into the regulated medical waste stream (red bags), your facility is needlessly paying for specialized disinfection and disposal. Institutions that reduced the volume of regulated waste have saved 40-70 percent on waste disposal. For example, Beth Israel Medical Center in New York saves $600,000 annually due to its reduction of regulated medical waste. Reducing solid waste also results in cost savings. Itasca Medical Center, a 130-bed hospital in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, is saving $16,000 annually by switching from disposable to reusable items.

Why Compliance and Beyond?

Federal and state governments are reshaping regulations as they relate to health care facilities. Since 1995, 95% of the medical waste incinerators in the U.S. have been closed because they could not meet environmental standards. State governments (such as Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and California) are banning the purchase of mercury-containing products and setting stricter wastewater treatment discharge limits for mercury. At the same time, hospitals are experiencing compliance problems across all environmental statutes, with the majority of violations (60%) involving hazardous waste management. Health care facilities need help responding to new regulatory changes and understanding how current rules apply specifically to health care.

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The Environmental Excellence: Compliance and Beyond section of our website (the horizontal navigation bar at the top of the page) is designed to help decipher the maze of regulations that govern health care. From our homepage, explore the links across this section for a wide variety of tools and resources for compliance and pollution prevention. Implementing pollution prevention programs can help reduce your compliance liability, improve your environmental performance, and help you save money.