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The Smell of Green

by Christine DeGennaro, Writer | May 27, 2010

Deirdre has also spearheaded efforts to create legislation limiting the use of toxic chemicals, particularly where children might be exposed to them. As a result, New York City passed the "Greening Our Cleaning Act" in 2006, which reduced the city's use of toxic and hazardous products in schools and more than 6,000 city-owned or contracted buildings. The states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have also since passed legislation regulating toxic cleaners and many more states are coming on board.

Since then, other hospitals began to green their cleaning. In 2004, Jacobi Medical Center and North Central Bronx Hospital became the first two facilities in New York City to replace traditional cleaners with environmentally friendly ones.

"You start going through the material safety data sheets on these products, you realize they all have persistent bioaccumulative affects, meaning once they get into your body, they don't get out. So these were problems," said Peter Lucey, associate executive director for logistics and support services for the
North Bronx Healthcare Network, which manages both hospitals.

For NBHN, worries over asthmatic patients helped spark the decision to go green, as the Bronx has the highest incidence of the disease in the country. The concern was that hospital cleaning products might prompt an asthma attack in a patient who had come in with another ailment.

"We had no data on it, we didn't know, but we all felt it to be the right thing to do," said Lucey.

WHAT IS "GREEN"?

After a facility makes the decision to go "green," officials must navigate a confusing world in which just about everybody is slapping a "green" claim on their product, as the U.S. government has not yet formed an official regulatory definition of the term.

"People unfortunately have many interpretations on how to use the word green," Imus pointed out.

But while Lucey and Imus agree that hospitals switching to environmental cleaners should seek out products that carry an independent third-party certification, they disagree on which certificates carry merit.

The North Bronx Healthcare Network opted to use products certified by Green Seal.

"When people say they're green, there's nothing to prevent them from buying whatever chemical it is - ammonia, gasoline, I don't care - putting it in a bottle with some blue food coloring and calling it a green cleaner. There's no standard and that's why we look to Green Seal," he explained.

"Our standards are based on a life cycle approach, so we examine the impact of a product through its whole life cycle; through the raw materials, the manufacturing process, how the product or service is used and how it's disposed," said Linda Chipperfield, vice president of marketing and outreach at Green Seal. "And we try to reduce the environmental impact in all of these areas and we also look at performance."