The press release below is from the University of Copenhagen Department of Chemistry. The anesthetic gases isofluran, desflurane and sevoflurane are coming under scrutiny for global warming potential. However, what isn’t stated in the press release is this important paragraph of the scientific paper :
There are no production numbers available in the literature
for the anaesthetic agents. The three compounds have not yet been observed in the free atmosphere, and current atmospheric levels are expected to be small (of the order of part per trillion/volume). At these concentrations, when viewed in isolation, their present contribution to the relative forcing of climate change is negligible in comparison with the current forcing of 1.7 Watts/sq meter due to CO2.
Later though, even though they admit they have no numbers on the production quantity of these anaesthetic agents, and “the three compounds have not yet been observed in the free atmosphere”, they use some SWAG to make this claim:
Hence, we conclude that global emissions of inhalation anaesthetics, when measured by the 100 yr GWP, have a contribution to the radiative forcing of climate change which is comparable with that of the CO2 emissions from one coal-fired power plant or approximately 1 million passenger cars.
Gosh, more than a whole coal-fired power plant! Somebody tell China immediately so they can stop building two a week.
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Neglected greenhouse gas discovered by atmosphere chemists
When doctors want their patients asleep during surgery they gently turn the gas tap. But Anaesthetic gasses have a global warming potential as high as a refrigerant that is on its way to be banned in the EU. Yet there is no obligation to report anaesthetic gasses along with other greenhouse gasses such as CO2, refrigerants and laughing gas.
Significantly worse than CO2
One kilo of anaesthetic gas affects the climate as much as 1620 kilos of CO2. That has been shown by a recent study carried out by chemists from University of Copenhagen and NASA in collaboration with anaesthesiologists from the University of Michigan Medical School. The amount of gas needed for a single surgical procedure is not high, but in the US alone surgery related anaesthetics affected the climate as much as would one million cars.Tænk før bedøvelse
Think before you gas them
Analyses of the anaesthetics were carried out by Ole John Nielsen. He is a Professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, and he’s got an important message for doctors.
“We studied three different gasses in regular use for anaesthesia, and they’re not equally harmful,” explains Professor Nielsen.
All three are worse than CO2 but where the mildest ones Isoflurane and Sevoflurane have global warming potentials of 210 and 510 respectively, Desflurane the most harmful will cause 1620 times as much global warming as an equal amount of CO2, explains the professor.
“This ought to make anaesthesiologists sit up and take notice. If all three compounds have equal therapeutic worth, there is every reason to choose the one with the lowest global warming potential”, says professor Ole John Nielsen.
Inspired by maternity ward
The three anaesthetic gasses isofluran, desflurane and sevoflurane were studied at the Ford atmospheric laboratories in Michigan. Mads Andersen of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories collaborated on the analyses with his former PhD supervisor Ole John Nielsen. He relates how he got the idea for the study while his wife was giving birth.
“The anaesthesiologist told me, that the gas used is what we chemist know as a halogenated compound. That’s the same family of compound as the Freon that was famously eating the ozone layer back in the eighties” says research scientist Mads Andersen.
On the map with ozone eaters replacement
Freon is a compound that Andersen knows well. It got his supervisor Professor Nielsen on the scientific map. With a global warming potential of a whopping 11.000 the refrigerant Freon has been banned all over the world since 1992. When the search was on for an alternative to the harmful substance Nielsen analysed just how much heat was retained by new compounds, and how long they would stay in the atmosphere. His methods went to prove, that the refrigerant HFC134a had a global warming potential of 1.300 and left the atmosphere in just 14 years to freons 50 to 100 years.Det gode viger pladsen for det endnu bedre
HFC-134a has spared the atmosphere a considerable climate effect. But it too is being prohibited all across the European Union. And unless therapeutic arguments speak for using all three, sevoflurane should be the only legal anaesthetic gas as shown by the study done by NASA, Ford and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen.
The study was published in the renowned medical journal “British Journal of Anaestecia”.
PDF of original science paper here
the preceding public service announcement was brought to you by…
…your local liquor lobby
Someone shut these idiots up….
And THIS, just IN! Genric havnisin der plidnude goder dnet!
They suggest cutting back to one type of anesthetic to save the equivalent of one coal fired plant’s global warming potential?
And what about the patients who can’t tolerate specific meds, or in cases where one might be contraindicated?
Hey, while we’re at it, those CT and MRI machines suck up a TON of electricity… why don’t we just, y’know, shut ’em off. You can get by with X-rays.
If no one is going to say it i will, BULLSH!T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What is it with this radiative myopia? Why is it we never hear anything about energy transfer between molecules of different but well mixed gases, especially from those in smaller to those in higher concentration that have more than one state in the atmosphere? I’m no physicist but surely there is something missing here.
Everything good for us = bad for climate
Climate = bad for us.
Pamela Gray says:
December 5, 2010 at 7:51 am
“Well by golly, “Det gode viger pladsen for det endnu bedre…” says it ALL!”
Google says: “The beauty give way to even better…” (Danish to English)
As a retired anaesthetist (anaesthesiologist), I can assure you that this is not news. It has been known for years that, being fluorocarbons, they have this potential. In truth, the quantities used are tiny. Because of the expense, they are generally used in rebreathing systems with CO2 absorption with soda lime. Increasingly, total intravenous anaesthesia is being implemented for a number of reasons including the elimination of pollution of the operating theatre environment.
Usage is unlikely to change much in the future as there are few alternatives, unless we go back to opium and alcohol!
Okay. Let’s plug that into the sentence:
“His methods went to prove, that the refrigerant HFC134a had a global warming potential of 1.300 and left the atmosphere in just 14 years to freons 50 to 100 years. [The beauty give way to even better.] Det gode viger pladsen for det endnu bedre.”
Ya know, that makes perfect sense given the overall tenor of this article (sounds of splattered Irish Coffee on puter screen).
Wow! Never thought i’d see the day when climate science went all homeopathy on us!… Then again… maybe it did many years ago.
I suppose they though this would be the knock out blow for skeptics.
It seems to be the norm with these Malthusian, misanthropic sociopaths to pick an aspect of modern living that benefits humanity, be it the Green Revolution, ease of travel, pain free surgery, comfortable living and food safety via refrigeration, whatever. Pick something, anything, of benefit to man that technology provides, and demonize it, turn it around so that it is killing Gaia or harming people (we’re just too stupid and unenlightened to realize it). This seems to represent a self loathing of your own kind that is just madness, and it appears the disease is spreading.
Just because we have never seen these gases in the atmosphere is no reason not to invoke the Precautionary Principal and ban them now! Except for special cases of course, like if our leaders or betters need surgery.
Sometimes I feel like Orwell was a raging optimist.
Has no one noticed that the graph at the beginning of the article is incorrect?? The peak spectral emission from the earth occurs at about 10 microns not 17-18 as shown. Also, the slope of the curve is backward. Emission spectral curves plotted against wave number should rise slowly and then fall quickly as the wavenumber increases drastically. The proper way to plot emissive power v wavelenth gives a classic shape rising at the left quickly and then falling away slowly after the peak which occurs at 2900microns per degree kelvin divided by the absolute temperature in degrees kelvin.
How many elements, compounds and mixtures are there? They have a lot to draw from to promote AGW. A lot to throw at the wall to see what sticks.
Was the study done on the gases going into the patient or coming out of the patient? Since they are Anaesthetic gases, they must chemically react to get a result. I doubt there is much wasted directly into the air.
the best gas to use on the greenies is CO2, they will not remember a thing
Henry chance says:
December 5, 2010 at 6:49 am
Nitrous oxide, cyclopropane, ether, fluothane etc. are used in small doasges. Actually the breath of air from a patient is recycled. The Soda lime is used to remove CO2. It appears the greenie weenies are desparate and chase around making obscure claims assuming they are correct and won’t get refuted. Many machines also have a cannister of CO2. Giving a patient CO2 is to keep the heart rate going.
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And that’s that. A simple observation, really: patients wear masks that the gasses are delivered through from a closed system. Thanks, Henry. Nothing to see here, unless there are “free range” dental clinics somewhere we aren’t aware of…
So essentially they want people to buy the crap with the longest patent time left. Oh, and they need more money to really get to the bottom of this new doom and gloom problem before the earth burns to cinders.
I’m still thinking that as their revenue streams starts to run dry they get ever lauder still and plotted it looks exactly like the hookeyschtick.
I wonder who that man can be
Now coming near! He seems to me
Like one who holds within his hand
The sun, the moon, the planets, and
Maintains this little world of ours
Obedient to his sovereign powers.
What stately mien and look has he,
Compared with men of less degree!
That must be “Prex,” or some great Prof.-
I think I’ll take my hat quite off.
A Voice.
Oh, no, young sir,
You greatly err!
It is the college carpenter.
Ozora Stearns Davis
Ahhh…halogenated hydrocarbons. What atmospheric chemists refer to as the “Nobel gases” (as in Prize and recognition). What a fine piece of work from the University of Copenhagen’s famous Department of Specious Science. These three gases (i.e. drugs) all have varying pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties and are not clinically interchangeable.
Some may recall that metered dose inhalers for asthmatics were given a pass on the CFC ban until 2007. At the time CDCs were vilified due to the bogus claim of ozone depletion. Nobody was terribly upset about their GHG potential. They were replaced as propellant in MDIs with hydrofluoroalkanes which I’m sure have just as much GHG potential as the CFCs they replaced. The result was predictable enough. MDIs of albuterol with CFCs were abundantly available as inexpensive generics. The new HFA products use the same, old generic drug but the delivery system is now proprietary so every dose costs the asthmatic (and the healthcare system) four times as much.
These same people look the other way as the Gulf of Mexico dies, the Middle East is swamped with radiation and birth defects, and our land and water is poisoned, and various other very real environmental disasters occur, but where’s THEIR movement? Oh, yeah, these things require actual clean-up and they COST money, whereas the carbon-trading scheme and various taxation benefits will generate them money. These so-called “champions of the earth” seem awfully eager to carve the planet up and collect taxes while not actually reducing any of the pollution they’re screaming is going to cause widespread heat waves and catastrophic weather, unless it causes widespread snowstorms and cold weather, or no storms and mild weather, in the which case, conveniently, it is also the cause of that. The only thing, so far, I’ve not seen attributed to global warming is the tendency for so-called “experts” to continue to spout off nonsense and religious fervor disguised as science and continue to receive massive entitlements and grants for doing so. With how much is happening, perhaps that will be the next thing AGW “causes.”
Well gives meaning to “Bite the Bullet “These fools want the 1800’s all over again.
-At Best….
Another stupid scaremongering story. When one of these clowns has to go to the dentist for a root canal they should be denied the anesthetic.
My question is why does the blackbody graph not show the other side of the Gaussian curve? Might it be because that H2O is the primary absorber?
Why do I find myself wondering who’s got a nice shiny new patent on a new anesthetic gas that isn’t selling as well as they would like…
I also find it funny that they are still harping on the Ozone Hole issue. Last I looked, the time lag of 50 years had suddenly evaporated when it was banned, as the ‘result’ showed up almost immediately. And how we end up with a gas largely emitted in the N. Hemisphere that doesn’t make a hole there, only in the S. Hemisphere is, er, not to be discussed…
I’m reluctantly coming to embrace the notion that any time “safety” and “environment” are bandied about it’s because someone has a new product to sell and is buying politicians. Never had wanted to think that. Always tossed mud at “conspiracy theories”. But it’s not a conspiracy theory when we have the conspirators colluding in their own “diplomatic” communications and swapping bribes.
For my part: Give me the best anesthetic that works for the job. Everything else can go bugger off…