Ironically, while providing health care and saving lives, hospitals can be major contributors of toxins into the environment, negatively affecting the public health of the communities they serve.  Thankfully, dozens of Maryland hospitals and health care facilities are reducing toxins by instituting greener, safer health care practices due to funding from the Jacob & Hilda Blaustein Foundation, Aaron Straus & Lillie Straus Foundation, Abell Foundation, Clayton Baker Trust, and the Zanvyl & Isabelle Krieger Fund.

 

Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment, also known as MD H2E, was launched in 2005 with a mission to hold the state's health care industry accountable to its pledge to "do no harm" through better environmental stewardship. The initiative helps hospitals, clinics, and other health care facilities form "green teams;" purchase products and services that reduce negative impacts on the environment; and recycle or responsibly dispose of batteries, light bulbs, cleaners and foods.

This effort began when Betsy Ringel, executive director of the Jacob & Hilda Blaustein Foundation, heard a presentation on the health care industry's role in environmental polution and realized local funders had been investing in hospitals with little awareness of their environmental impact. She brought the presentation to her colleagues at the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers. Equally struck by the irony and severity of this problem, several funders responded.
 
Building on the expertise of Barbara Sattler, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing who had been doing cutting edge work in environmental health, MD H2E emerged from partnerships with national players such as Health Care Without Harm and National Hospitals for a Healthy Environment, and state groups like the Maryland Nurses Association and the Maryland Hospital Association. Renewed interest in the environment and the media's focus on environmental causes of disease made the timing right for a statewide movement, that has become a national model, to move health care facilities toward healthier, cleaner practice. 
 
Since MD H2E started, Mercy Hospital, one of more than 50 participants in the project, has closed its on-site incinerator, reduced regulated medical waste by 60 percent, begun a food waste composting program, started a less toxic pest control program, and implemented recycling for beverage containers, paper, and batteries.