Baden-Wuerttemberg. In the fight against climate change Baden-Wuerttemberg hospital operating rooms. Because medical Anesthetic gas are among the worst climate killers in the world. In the southwest, they are to be filtered from the exhaust air from hospitals, as the Ministry of Science has announced. State minister wants details of the project Theresia Bauer to be presented in the cabinet next Tuesday (July 21). First the “taz” reported about it.
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According to the “German Society for Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine” an estimated 17 million anesthetics are performed in German hospitals for operations each year. In addition, there are many thousands more anesthetics in medical practices and treatment centers where people undergo outpatient surgery. Quite a few of these Anesthetic gas are not caught. According to a study by the “Klik Green” climate project, which was supposed to compile potentials for climate protection in the health care system from 2019 to 2022, the climate-damaging emissions of a seven-hour operation with the gas desflurane correspond to a car journey of 15,000 kilometers.
This is where the Ministry of Science wants to start and, according to its own statements, is the first federal state to Anesthetic gases to use. Anesthetic gas are direct greenhouse gases, they caused around half of the greenhouse gases produced in the operating room and 35 percent of the emissions of the entire hospital, it said. “Thus, their reduction is of relevant importance in the implementation of climate protection goals,” said Bauer. She will also campaign for a nationwide ban on gases that are harmful to the climate without filters and will promote it in private hospitals, she said.
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