ABSTRACT
Healthcare organizations are high-stress, high-stakes environments in which safety is of primary concern to both patients and employees. Building a safety culture is part of building a sustainability culture. There are numerous examples of unsafe healthcare products that contain chemicals known to have negative health impacts. Kaiser Permanente developed a Sustainability Scorecard to vet the safety of such products, and made it freely available to the public.180 Equally concerning are the chemicals used in healthcare whose interactive effects have yet to be studied. Increased awareness of environmental safety hazards places additional scrutiny on healthcare leaders to assure that healing environments are safe. Beyond direct patient impact, there are safety concerns related to the use and disposal of toxic materials.181 This chapter helps readers understand when and how to use sustainability as a tool to mitigate safety risks related to potentially dangerous chemicals.
