Sam Smith, MD, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, has switched the kind of anesthetic gas he uses at work every day to cut down on his environmental impact, according to a Jan. 10 report from WBUR.
Dr. Smith researched anesthetic gasses and their impact on the environment, and he found that eight hours of using the popular anesthetic desflurane had the environmental impact equivalent of driving 1,600 miles in a car.
Using nitrous oxide was the same as driving about 270 miles. Dr. Smith has switched to using sevoflurane, which is more like driving 32 hours over the course of an eight hour shift.
Dr. Smith also began to decrease the amount of anesthetic he uses on patients, in cooperation with national guidance. He investigated gas options that do not release greenhouse gasses, and looked at local anesthesia in place of general sedation.
Dr. Smith also co-founded a committee at Mass General to discuss changes for the whole anesthesiology department. Mass General has signed a pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Its latest assessment found that 43 percent of the hospital's greenhouse emissions are currently tied to anesthesia.
Mass General now purchases very little desflurane, and they are urging other hospitals to do the same.
"If we want to mitigate that risk, whether it be climate change or other harms from environmental pollution, then tackling anesthesia has to be one of the few top priorities," Jonathan Slutzman, MD, Mass General's center for environmental health director, told WBUR.