When Jesse Brown VA’s Assistant Chief of Anesthesiology Dr. Gretchen Fox brought an innovative anesthetic gas capturing and recycling system to her facility, she wasn’t aware of the positive environmental impacts it would have. Initially, she sought to fix the lack of operating room space at her VA. But it turned out her discovery had a bigger impact than she could have imagined.
“In anesthesiology, we see that 95% of our delivered anesthetic gasses are wasted and pumped out the hospital’s roof. Because the gasses are seven times heavier than air, they sink to the ground, which is the surrounding sidewalks where patients and workers tend to be.”
The gas capturing and recycling system collects expired anesthetic gasses that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere from the top of the medical facility. The waste is collected into canisters, cleaned and recycled into a reusable anesthetic gas.
VA campuses are meeting spots for Veterans, so it’s essential to keep these spaces safe.
Equivalent to planting 125,000 trees
The adoption of this technology not only made the air surrounding Jesse Brown cleaner, it reduced the facility’s emissions by 30%. To put this into perspective, the facility would have had to plant 125,000 trees to offset these emissions.
After successfully adopting the technology at Jesse Brown, Fox (pictured above) and then-Green Environmental Management Systems Manager Justin Macadangdang started Project Capturing Anesthetics Toward Climate Health (CATCH). The campaign advocates for adopting gas recycling systems across VA nationwide.
Project CATCH’s technology will lead to cost savings over time, which means allocating resources more efficiently to provide high-quality care and support services for Veterans. Because of Fox’s and Macadangdang’s efforts, CATCH won the 2022 VA Sustainability Award for Climate Innovation.
VA has “made ourselves a resilient institution,” Fox said. “We’ve figured out how to capture gas. We’ve figured out how to decrease our energy pull.”
As federal health systems shift towards sustainable care practices, VA is embracing leading the way in making health care delivery more environmentally sustainable with initiatives like CATCH. Implementing sustainable health care practices leads to a safer VA for today’s Veterans and future generations, making VA a place Veterans can continue to rely on for the best quality care despite disruption from climate-related shocks and stressors.
To learn more about VA’s sustainability efforts, visit Energy, Environment, and Fleet Program – U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
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Thank you to those who are advocating for change in a positive direction. Even if climate change is fake (I believe it’s real), spewing gasses onto veterans is a terrible thing and so is just letting it blow out into the atmosphere, so this is a great idea. I’m a big fan of all the solar panels at my Houston VA too. That was brilliant!
Great news and how very sad it is that several vets go out of their way to express their profound and bitter ignorance.
The biggest threat to Veteran Healthcare is the VA. Gaslighting about man-made climate change helps no one.
Your solicitation that climate change is one of the “biggest public health threats of the 21st century” is NOT TRUE – it is a money making scheme for certain individuals and a method to control the underlings like us veterans. Capturing the gasses with the ‘CATCH’ process is a good thing – don’t politicize that with an unproved theory like climate change. (Army veteran – 1st Gulf War)
What happened to free speech?
I must say that I’m Proud to be a US Army Veteran & to be associated with such a Great Government Organization such as Veteran Affairs not only for my Excellent Benefits & Healthcare, but for all of the Initiatives that VA already have in place or working on to make sure that Veterans can live a healthy and productive lifestyle (for all of my Brother in Arms…(Disabled Veteran) Thank You ? VA For all that you’ve done &! all that you continue to do..
It takes more than recycled gas to make a “sustainable” health care system. Why not look into the pay for providers, ie, radiology techs, so they won’t quit working at the VA making it difficult for veterans to get the treatment they need? Rural states like Maine need to be a lot more competitive with the likes of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles in the pay they offer VHA employees. It’s pretty bad when VBA will give far better wages to it’s employees and steal them away from the health care side of the VA house. VBA employees are only glorified pencil pushers. Veterans need health care workers. Lincoln did not say lets write up benefits and claims for him who has served and his wife and family.
Recycled gas indeed!