Transcript:

There’s nothing funny about the climate pollution caused by laughing gas – the anesthetic technically known as nitrous oxide.

Golden: “Nitrous oxide is a very strong greenhouse gas.”

Leonard Golden is chair of anesthesiology at Jacobi Medical Center and North Central Hospital in the Bronx.

He says nitrous oxide has been used in hospitals for more than a century. It’s often piped from central tanks into operating rooms.

But a lot seeps out along the way.

Golden: “A large amount or even the majority of the gas actually leaks out before it even gets to the patient through the pipelines.”

So his hospitals and two others within the same health network have eliminated centrally piped nitrous oxide.

Sudheer Jain, chief of anesthesiology at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, says doctors have access to portable tanks of it if needed. But …

Jain: “With the advances in pharmacology, the availability of other medications … it seemed to make sense that, hey, maybe we don’t need to use this particular gas as much as we used to.”

The doctors say the change is helping reduce climate pollution without compromising patient care.

Jain: “Hopefully, our example shows other people that this is possible.”

Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media