Groups hope to make health care providers healthier

By Oz Hopkins Koglin        The Oregonian  1/12/01

    The greening of hospitals is the goal of a coalition of Portland groups supporting a national campaign to eliminate hospital pollutants without compromising safety or health care.

    "Our mission is to find alternatives to the use, storage, manufacture and release of organic pollutants that linger in the environment for a long time and build up in the food chain and get  into our system that way," said Jane Haley, President of the Oregon Center for Environmental Health.  

    Haley founded the non-profit organization four years ago to focus on pollution issues from a public health perspective.  The group has joined with Legacy Health  System, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the Portland chapter of  Physicians for Social Responsibility to support Heath Care Without Harm, an international campaign based in Falls Church, Va., that works to reform environmental practices in the health care industry.

    The Portland coalition is planning conferences in May and later in the spring for health care managers who deal with hospital materials and waste disposal. 

    Because technology has brought increased use of plastics and disposable products, hospital  waste has more than doubled since 1955, according to the campaign.  The Portland group's primary focus will be on mercury and dioxin contamination, Haley said.

    The unnecessary burning of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC plastic, along with paper, batteries, discarded equipment and other non-infectious materials, emits dioxin, mercury and other toxic materials, according to the campaign.  

    Among Health Care Without Harm's goals are:

•     Promoting comprehensive pollution prevention.
•     Supporting the development and use of environmentally safe materials, technology and products.
•     Educating and informing health care institutions, providers, workers, consumers and others about the environmental and effects on public health of the health care industry, along with solutions to such problems.

    Dioxin, a known cancer-causing substance, is the common name for a class of 75 chemicals.  It is a toxic-waste by product formed when materials that contain chlorine are burned or when products containing chlorine are manufactured.  It has no commercial use.

    The primary source of chlorine in medical waste is PVC plastic.  Its man uses include intravenous bags, tubing and packaging for medical instruments.

    Some hospitals already are taking steps to combat dioxin.  

    Legacy Health System recycles about 150,000 pounds of plastic hospital packaging materials each year from Legacy hospitals and from about 15 others in the state.

    John McAllister,  manger of housekeeping services at Legacy, said plastics used to be dumped into the trash and burned.  Now plastics are sorted by a team of developmentally disabled workers and sent to outlets in this country and abroad, where they are broken down into resin and used to make new products.

    Dr. Catherine Thomasson, President of the board of the Portland Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said her organization is concerned because low levels of mercury contamination can pose problems for developing fetuses.  At the spring conferences, she will speak about the health effects of medical waste. 

    "We are trying to increase the education level and rules and regulations on how to get rid of mercury, so we don't have the risk of contamination," Thomasson said.

    Her group specifically wants to increase awareness of persistent pollutants that don't break down in the environment, said Thomasson, whose specialty is internal medicine.  "There are so many of them out there, I don't think researchers fully understand the combinations of toxins that we are getting, particularly in human  mild and crossing the placenta, so fetal development is affected."

    Mercury attacks the body's central nervous system.  Risks to developing fetuses and young children are the primary reasons for advisories discouraging pregnant women, women of child-bearing age and young children from eating too much fish, according to the campaign.

    Although some hospitals are working to become mercury-free, it still can be found in some hospitals' thermometer, blood-pressure measuring devices and fluorescent lamps.  Because of the widespread use of such items, medical waste may account for 20 percent of all the mercury in the solid-waste stream, according to the campaign.

    "It's wonderful that the Health Care Without Harm campaign exists," Thomasson said.  Physicians for Social Responsibility has been working on preventing pollution control by the health  care industry and welcomes the help, she said.