The Issue
Health care institutions, like institutions outside the health care sector, regularly use a suprising number of highly toxic materials. These toxins affect patients, hospital staff, and hospital visitors.
Many of these toxins are defined and regulated by federal, state and local laws. Others are used daily but hardly regulated at all. They include carcinogens, materials that damage the skin and organs, and materials that corrode, irritate, or release other toxins in the course of normal use, storage, transportation or disposal.
Toxins with an especially heavy impact in the health care sector may be found in:
- Dioxin-containing byproducts
- Mercury-containing medical devices and wastes
- Cleaners, disinfectants, pesticides, and fragrance chemicals
- Electronic equipment
- Flame retardants
- PVC, Phthalates and DEHP
Key Resources
- American Cancer Society, Cancer Facts & Figures 2007 (pdf)
- Common Substances in Hospitals May Cause Asthma: HCWH report (pdf) Read the press release
- EWG Survey links chemical exposures on the job to diseases in nurses
- Human Toxome Project tests blood, urine, breast milk and other human tissues for industrial chemicals that enter the human body as pollution via food, air, and water, or from exposures to ingredients in everyday consumer products
- Nationwide survey of more than 1,500 nurses suggests associations between the health of nurses and their children from nurses' exposures to hazardous chemicals and drugs in the workplace
- State of the Evidence 2008: The Connection Between Breast Cancer and the Environment
- Toxicant and Disease Database, maintained by the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, is a searchable database that summarizes links between chemical contaminants and approximately 180 human diseases or conditions
