About a 12 months in the past, I used to be declared cancer-free after 4 months of chemotherapy at Windfall St. John’s Well being Heart in Santa Monica, Calif. I had been identified with low-grade B cell non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. This was not my first encounter with most cancers. I’d had breast most cancers a lot of years prior, which was handled with radiation after which a full mastectomy. I notice I’m fortunate. I had caring, attentive medical doctors and nurses who saved my life. I additionally notice how a lot progress has been made in most cancers analysis and I’m deeply grateful.
But regardless of that, most cancers has develop into epidemic. Roughly 40% of individuals within the U.S. will develop most cancers and over 1.96 million new instances had been anticipated to be identified in 2023, in accordance with the Nationwide Most cancers Institute.
I’m a most cancers survivor but additionally a local weather activist and I’m very conscious of the connection between the atmosphere and well being—particularly most cancers. The identical fossil fuels which might be driving the local weather disaster are driving this well being disaster. The Environmental Safety Company retains discovering cancer-causing chemical substances derived from fossil fuels—equivalent to dioxins, benzene, and naphthalene—within the air, in our water, our meals, our furnishings, our clothes, the utensils we cook dinner with…. They’re additionally in our our bodies. These poisons are even discovered within the umbilical cords of new child youngsters.
A Harvard Heart for Public Well being examine discovered fossil fuel-related air air pollution precipitated over 8 million deaths globally in 2018—that’s extra in a single 12 months than died from COVID-19 in three years. It’s a disaster. Oil, gasoline, and coal are making the planet sick and making folks and different animals sick.
Well being care establishments have been heroic on the subject of curing folks. However it’s time now for them to maneuver upstream and assist forestall the hurt within the first place. In spite of everything, that’s the physician’s creed: first do no hurt.
So why, in accordance with the environmental group Stand.earth, have the 4 massive healthcare pension funds within the U.S.—the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, HCA Healthcare and Ascension Well being—invested greater than $4.5 billion {dollars} in fossil gas firms?
Our well being care system is accountable for nearly 9% of the nation’s greenhouse gasoline emissions due to the system’s reliance on fossil fuels to run its amenities and tools, the petrochemical plastics used to make its units, the anesthetic gases they use within the working room, and the meals and medicines it purchases.
Gary Cohen, co-founder of Well being Care With out Hurt, made me hopeful when he informed me that the well being care neighborhood—led normally by its nurses—has made massive modifications earlier than. After they discovered that medical waste incinerators had been a number one contributor of cancer-causing dioxin emissions within the U.S., hundreds of incinerators had been closed and hospitals discovered scale back their waste, reuse and recycle what they might, and use safer waste-treatment applied sciences to dispose of doubtless poisonous supplies. When research started to indicate that damaged mercury thermometers had been contributing to harmful mercury ranges in water and fish, the well being sector phased out mercury thermometers and located safer options, not solely in our nation however all world wide.
Well being Care With out Hurt has pushed hospitals and well being care facilities to decide to plans to attain web zero emissions within the close to future, and hundreds extra world wide are on the identical path. Greater than 75 governments have dedicated to design low-carbon and climate-resilient well being programs, together with the U.S.
The well being care neighborhood and hospitals specifically ought to lead the remainder of society in addressing this intersectional well being and local weather crises, which the World Well being Group calls “one of many biggest well being threats for humanity.”
There are some massive steps that must be taken. Hospitals have to embrace making certain a wholesome atmosphere with the identical heroism they embrace curing most cancers. They will begin to run hospitals on renewable vitality and to purchase provides (together with meals) from native sources to scale back carbon from transportation emissions. That might additionally assist communities by supporting native sustainable improvement. They will additionally scale back single-use plastics, get rid of polluting anesthetic gasses, electrify their car fleets, transfer to extra telemedicine, and waste much less medication and different provides. Well being care is 17% of all the U.S. financial system—consider the impression if the sector totally dedicated to those renovations.
Local weather-smart well being care is preventative drugs on a grand scale. Give it some thought: We will’t have wholesome folks on a sick planet. Thanks, well being care establishments for serving to me heal. And be a part of me, well being care establishments, in serving to the planet heal.
Components of this piece are tailored from remarks Fonda delivered at a Metropolis of Hope occasion in 2023.