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Sustainability in the Operating Room
Summary
Researchers review the outsized environmental footprint of surgical operating rooms — particularly from volatile anesthetic agents, medications, and single-use equipment — and argue that anesthesiology has exceptional leverage to reduce healthcare's greenhouse gas emissions and waste burden as part of a broader sustainability transformation in medicine.
Climate change will be the defining health crisis of the twenty-first century, and environmental health is directly linked with human health. The health sector should lead the sustainability effort by greening itself and reducing its ecological footprint to improve global health and the health of the planet. Anesthesiology has an oversized role in production of greenhouse gases and waste, and thus its impact on affecting change is also oversized. Decreasing the waste of volatile anesthetic agents, medications, and anesthesia equipment is a powerful start to the many sustainability changes needed in health care.
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