Denver Health was losing about 90% of its nitrous oxide to the leak. So it cut off the gas.
Inside Denver Health’s main building, on a locked floor that most of the doctors who work at the hospital have never visited, around huge oxygen tanks and under hanging tubes and pipes water, there is a narrow room with eight tall blue cylinders. compressed gas.
The cylinders contain nitrous oxide – N2Oh, the inhalant known as laughing gas – and it is from this room that the pipes woven throughout the hospital take the gas to the operating rooms and other places where it can be used. Or at least it did.
Last month, Denver Health switched from using nitrous oxide that is infused in the middle of the pipes from these open tanks to using small, portable tanks located in operating rooms that can be closed when not in use. Dr. Amanda Deis, a pediatric anesthesiologist at the hospital, was one of those who helped turn the cylinder heads.
He said: “This was a very important day.
The reason for the change is twofold. First, nitrous oxide is an earth-damaging gas that destroys atmospheric ozone. And, secondly, hospitals across the country waste a ton of it.
When Deis did the math, comparing how much the hospital bought laughing gas and how much the patients used, he found that about 90% was lost to leaks throughout the hospital. That’s not a joke.
This leak – every connection and valve in the system allows gas to escape – is not enough in any one place to cause indoor air problems. The hospital is doing tests to confirm.
But the leak means that loose nitrous is the main cause of the hospital’s climate. And this is not a problem at Denver Health – hospitals around the world have experienced similar leak rates.
Dr. Jodi Sherman, a professor of anesthesiology at the Yale Medical Center, who has become an expert on hospital climate issues, says that the health care sector is responsible for almost 9% of the world’s greenhouse gases. Within a hospital, operating rooms are some of the harshest environments, partly because of all the things being used and thrown away but also because of the climatic effects from anesthesia gas, he said.
His research and the work of others has led to increased attention to environmental improvement in hospitals.
“We all need to work to make health care safer, and that includes reducing its pollution,” Sherman said.
Most of the emissions that can be produced by the health care sector do not actually come from the pipes and facilities of the hospitals, themselves, but from the supply of all the things that are used by hospitals – medical equipment, safety equipment, -bandages, etc. That’s about 80% of the industry’s output, Sherman said.
On the other hand, studies conducted in the United Kingdom show that anesthetics make up 5 percent of the hospital environment. But those numbing pills help a lot to warm up.
As a greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Another common anesthetic gas, desflurane, is 2,500 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Hospitals have tried to deal with this in part by reducing the amount of nitrous oxide used. But Sherman said it’s not enough.
“Even if you use less, the system is always leaking,” he said.
Hospitals can’t stop using nitrous oxide entirely because it still has areas where it’s needed, Deis said. He said about pediatric surgeries – some kids get sick if you give them anesthesia with an injection while they’re awake, so Deis said he’ll use nitrous to help the child sleep before giving him other drugs.
That made turning off medium tanks and switching to portable tanks the best option. Late last month, the American Association of Anesthesiologists agreed, issuing a statement calling for the implementation of central nitrous oxide tubes in favor of portable tanks.
Dr. David Abts, an anesthesiologist at Denver Health, said the hospital is the first major facility in Colorado to make the switch to portable nitrous tanks.
Combined with another change Denver Health made — swapping out desflurane for something more climate-friendly — the switch is expected to reduce emissions from Denver Health’s operating rooms by more than 95%.
“To put some numbers on that, it’s like, every year, we take over 1,800 SUVs off the road from Denver to New York City,” he said.
Those numbers mean Deis will take a breather in the operating room.
“Knowing that I’m already contributing to that global warming problem, this feels good,” he said, “to know that we can change one system to reduce our footprint. as we make these medicines available to patients.”
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