Environmental Sciences Commons^™

Water Pollution And Environmental Concerns In Anesthesiology, Marc Kostrubiak, Christine Vatovec, Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, Donna Rizzo, William Paganelli, Mitchell Tsai

Larner College of Medicine Fourth Year Advanced Integration Teaching/Scholarly Projects

Medications administered by anesthesia health care providers and subsequently excreted into the water supply system have the potential to affect ecological systems. Presently, there is a lack of literature examining which medications or metabolites enter the waste stream. Further, assessments of their potential environmental impact are often unknown or simply not considered as an externality of medical practice. Recent work examining the practice of anesthesiology has explored the solid waste stream, and the global warming potential of anesthetic gases, however the potential aquatic impacts remain unexplored. To address the potential for waterborne pollution and environmental toxicity, we extracted the total …