Workers In Action: Danette Beechinor and nitrous oxide reduction in hospital clinical areas
By changing how nitrous oxide (N20) is distributed to hospital clinical areas, pharmacist Danette Beechinor and a team of health allies, are reducing harmful environmental leaks by 80 per cent. That’s equivalent to an annualized impact of planting 1450 trees. 
N20 has a global warming potential 300 times greater than carbon dioxide, persisting for over 100 years in the atmosphere. Issues with N20 waste first came to light through a project in Scotland, showing N20 was leaking from the delivery systems. Inspired by these findings, Danette, a co-chair on the Sunnybrook Green Team, began to look at her hospital’s system. It was discovered that 99 per cent of the hospital’s N20 was leaking into the environment. “Consider that the amount of N2O purchased by our organization over a 5-year period has the global warming equivalent of driving over 35 million kilometres in a car,” Danette said.
Based on the Sunnybrook findings, Dr. Anita Rao at Trillium Health Partners led decommissioning the N20 system at their orthopedic site. Sunnybrook turned off N20 to its orthopedic site in May by using smaller tanks attached to the anesthesia machines, resulting in less waste. “Our main campus at Sunnybrook is planning to pilot a transition to small tanks in all clinical spaces, but this will take a little longer, due to the complexity and variety of spaces where
N2O is delivered by the central system,” Danette said. “Once the transition is completed at the large site, the central N2O supply will be decommissioned and the large tanks removed.”
Danette credits Scottish Pharmacist Alifia Chakera for her advice and leadership in N2O waste reduction, Anesthetist Martin Van Der Vyver, Operating Room Manager Barb McArthur, Cardiologist Eric Cohen, Daniel Nunes of Plant Operations and Maintenance, and the anesthesia assistants for their essential roles in moving this project forward.
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