Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Conversation, people who use asthma inhalers release damaging amounts of greenhouse gasses.
Your asthma puffer is probably contributing to climate change, but there’s a better alternative
March 26, 2018 6.01am AEDT
Brett Montgomery.
Senior Lecturer in General Practice, University of Western Australia
I breathe all the way out. There’s a quiet puff of gas from my inhaler, and I breathe all the way in. I hold my breath for a few seconds and the medicine is where it needs to be: in my lungs.
Many readers with asthma or other lung disease will recognise this ritual. But I suspect few will connect it with climate change. Until recently, neither did I.
…
These medicines are available in various sorts of inhaler devices. The devices fall into two broad types: “metered dose inhalers” and “dry powder inhalers” of various shapes and sizes.
In metered dose inhalers, the medicine and a pressurised propellant liquid are mixed together in a little canister, and then sprayed out of the inhaler in a measured puff of fine mist. This is inhaled, often after passing through a “spacer” which allows more of the medicine to reach the lungs. While the medicine is absorbed by the body, the propellant, now a gas, is exhaled unchanged.
…
The one most often found in asthma metered dose inhalers, norflurane, is 1,430 times more potent than the best-known warming culprit, carbon dioxide. Another, apaflurane, is 3,220 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Such warming power explains why even the small amounts in an inhaler are significant. Globally, tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide equivalent are attributable annually to these inhaler gases.
…
A person using a preventer inhaler monthly, plus the odd reliever inhaler, could easily release the annual equivalent of a quarter of a ton of carbon dioxide — that’s like burning 100 litres of petrol.
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If metered dose inhalers are a better choice for you, please don’t panic or quit your medicines. These gases probably won’t be the biggest contributor to your personal carbon footprint. Asthma control is really important, and these medicines work really well. But consider changing if it’s an option for you — when it comes to reducing our footprint, every little bit counts.
As a lifelong asthmatic I’m familiar with different inhalers. I can tolerate the powder inhalers, but I know people who can’t – powder inhalers can irritate the airways. It would be unfortunate and harmful if this stretch of a climate warning develops into a movement to ban HFC propellent in asthma inhalers, or makes such inhalers more difficult to obtain or more expensive.
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I will wager that Al Gore’s arse, and/or, air travel contributes more. But unlike Al, these devices are life savers.
the epa banned the only rescue inhaler years ago (primatene mist). it worked in seconds.
i looked for a chart of asthma deaths because i’m pretty sure there must be a significant increase as a result of that move. i have been unable to find any.
now they sell epinephrine ampules but nebulizers are bulky and not conveniently portable.
albuterol is not a rescue inhaler. it can take many minutes to produce noticeable effect.
so i believe the epa brought about some deaths by suffocation.
That is so outrageous. SMH.
What’s the explanation for Primatene Mist not being reformulated to use an allowed propellant such as one used in current asthma inhalers?
You are quite correct. Primatene mist was a cheap and fantastic rescue inhaler. otc cost was approx 8 $. It’s main ingredient was epinephrine and is still the drug of choice for anaphylaxis world wide. Current rescue inhalers now cost approx 150.00$ and are no where near as effective as Primatene mist, WHICH SAVED MY LIFE MANY TIMES AS A CHILD ! Pulling it off the market for it’s so called effect on climate change was truly a crime against humanity. Whoever was responsible for that should hang. The real reason it is still off the shelves is because it was CHEAP and one did not need a prescription.
Yes I loved primatine mist. It’s what I used back in the late 1970s to start running to get my lungs in shape so that I no longer had shortness of breath. Today, when I visit Mexico, I stock up on Albuterol at any local drug store without need for prescription for about $5 per inhaler. It saves me from having to make a doctor appointment, pay a much larger co-pay, and resulting “who knows what” cost that my insurance must pay. Our laws add cost, and are dangerous! I am helping to reduce the costs by visiting Mexico.
mr klipstein-
i was told that a new inhaler made with a different propellant would require new fda certification and testing.
for an unpatentable medication like racepinephrine that was a deal killer.
but the epa bans medicine to save the planet is the adult version of eating tide pods.
Many so called environmentalists, want more people to die.
it seems environmentalists want *all people* to die, themselves excepted, of course…
Since Al Gore is 100% ass I’m pretty sure you’re right. Asthmatics have enough to deal with without any pressure from this idiot for their contribution to a non existent problem.
He’s an academic. End of story.
Just when I think it cannot get any crazier…it does, and I can’t keep up. “The sky is falling” Chicken-Littles of the world are winning.
‘Pine conifers’ in a logpile, i.e. without true value.
Time for ad hom. Thy mother was contributing to when made you.
Another option, I think this is good in emergency like this.
Thy mother made a personal carbon footprint!
I’ll make a point of using my inhaler as fast as my insurance company will pay for refills.
Thank you! Warmer is better. Unfortunately, the Earth fights warming tooth and nail with greater force and ingenuity than we can apply to warm it up.
I’ve heard this excuse back in early 1990’s. It turned out to be the Swedish Astra [now AstraZeneca] greasing the doctors to switch from the competitors drugs to theirs. Now, the doctors here in Sweden seams to promote the flawed Novolizer system [powder], that require some suction force. That might be troublesome when in great need …
How dare asthmatic children pollute the air my supercharged car needs to run at peak performance.
I’m so very offended……..
Don’t worry. The concept of a greenhouse gas was largely dreamed up anyhow. If indeed these gases did warm the air in any way, the resulting convection will carry the heat to altitude where it is last to space.
It is valid to say that no gas at any concentration can detectably warm the atmosphere because the water cycle convective heat engine ramps up with any warming and serves as a massive, global negative feedback mechanism, which is completely ignored by the warming alarmists.
Breath deeply and enjoy a good life.
“I can tolerate the powder inhalers, but I know people who can’t – powder inhalers can irritate the airways.”
I have tried a number of asthma drugs and those I didn’t tolerated (gen. asthma symptoms …) had one thing in common: powder containing glucose or lactose, even though I’m tolerant to those carb’s when in food.
UWA. I once held some respect for this university, I even attended it myself – however it’s fallen a long way in my estimation and having dealt with a large number of their medical GPs I’ve discovered many have chasms in their learning.
When they are prepared to read WA Health Department guidelines for diagnosis and treatments and observe them, I’ll be more inclined to listen to them and their opinions.
Actually, this piece should have made stronger arguments to discourage use of ANY inhaler.
The Greens have an unspoken requirement to dispose of billions of people in order to reach their ‘Sustainable Planet’ (though they don’t seam to understand that we can’t maintain the current standard of living if we do this.
Banning critical medicines would seem like a good Green way to start culling humanity…
That was the first thing that came to my mind while reading the article. Take away inhalers that work and you almost immediately doom thousands to death! Those Greens can be very sly….
And here I was thinking that all these Global Warming gravy trainers flying around the world to 20 or 30 different Globull Warming Climate Conferences every year was a problem for the worlds climate when all along it was me struggling to stay alive with my Asthma meds. How could I have been so misguided .
I will hand them all in when the thought police hold their next weapons amnesty and die like the good little compliant prole that I aspire to become.
Didn’t they already ban one or more of the better inhaler propellants because it ’caused the Ozone Hole’? You know, the hole that’s probably been there the whole time and always will be.
One shouldn’t be surprised by how many people the Greens are willing to let die to ‘Save the Earth’.
~¿~
Yes, we’ve already eliminated one very effective, cheap inhaler gas to save the ozone hole — although I can’t recall what it was. (It was also used in all kinds of spray cans in use at that time.)
The extreme greens would eliminate mankind (peoplekind for Trudeau) if they could. Since this is not popular with most of the people who send them money, they have to be satisfied with “allowing” us to die where they can justify it by saving the environment or some species or other — DDT, effective asthma inhalers, fuel to heat homes, etc.
I wish they would hurry up and try to eliminate mankind – I need the target practice to defend myself.
I thought that the only gas to be banned under the Montreal Protocols was CFC. Whether that was also the gas being used in inhalers I couldn’t say.
Prior to NASA changing the formula for the foam it applied to the external tanks due to the CFC ban, they had never had any problem with chunks of foam breaking off during launch.
They also banned HCHC’s and Bromine compounds. The replacement gases for refrigerant’s were largely HFC’s. It was already known at the time we were phasing out the Chlorine refrigerants that the HFC’s had theoretically higher global warming potential. It was an expensive endeavour to switch from CFC and HCFC and now it will have to be done all over again to go from HFC’s unless this global warming nonsense dies out.
“It would be unfortunate and harmful if this stretch of a climate warning develops into a movement to ban HFC propellent in asthma inhalers, or makes such inhalers more difficult to obtain or more expensive.”
Already did. My $5 old generic CFC inhaler was replaced with a $20 (after copay) inhaler, and it’s not nearly as effective.
Color me skeptical, but I don’t think an occasional puff on an inhaler made a bit of difference to the ozone hole. It did however make a nice profit on new companies with patents on using the new gas propellants.
There is no real world evidence that either CFCs or HFCs affect the ozone layer. It’s all from models.
The ban allowed Pharma to patent the reformulated medication and quadruple the price.
Yes. Mine went from $5 to $60. I hope the penguins appreciate my sacrifice.
Now we should worry about carbon footprint of healing drugs??? Well, just ban medicine altogether, then : dead people surely have lower carbon footprint.
These enviromons are crazy. If not crazy, they are paid as SasjaL pointed out https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/26/the-conversation-asthma-inhalers-contribute-to-global-warming/#comment-2774992
well they were also on about anaesthetics being bad bad bad for the climate too, guess its back to a bullet to bite on when surgerys required..lets see the proponents go first;-)
Sorry, no bullets to bite, thanks to the latest children’s crusade.
You could use a branch, providing they can get written permission from the tree first.
Or the time-tested practice of giving you copious amounts of strong drink, until you’re too drunk to care whether you are being cut into or not.
Scratch that, yeast fermentation produces CO2, so I guess that’s out.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Not even vaguely credible!
So, based on this nonsense, we have to assume an annual use of upwards of ~3000-7000 MT of these propellants in asthma inhalers to equate to “tens of millions of tons of CO2 per year”. Since the average inhaler contains about 5 grams of product and if we assume ALL that mass is propellant, that equates to 600 MILLION – 1.4 BILLION inhaler cartridges per year. Which means there must be an AWFUL lot of asthmatics in the world and they must ALL be using these specific types of inhaler! What absolute nonsense!!! These people are just ridiculous!
I wondered about this too. Besides this being a depressing (but unsurprising) low in alarmist misanthropy, it also highlights their complete inability to hold any sense of proportion. This is also unsurprising too I guess – the view held by censorious climate worriers that the external world is a tiny, fragile and perfect place threatened by imperfect people is a very accurate projection of their internal world.
I’m guessing that they believe HFCs are a stronger GHG than CO2.
To how may breaths of 4,000 ppm exhale do these inhalers’ output equate? Euthanasia may be more effective.
Seems that a modern COPD inhaler using Norflurane will give about 200 doses service from its 8g. of propellant. That’s perhaps 0,04 g per patient per day. That’s 57g of carbon dioxide equivalent.at the exchange rate quoted by the paper. The average man exhales about 1150g of CO2 per day. Therefore the patient would only have to miss out 1 breath in every 20 in order to reduce his carbon footprint to that of a non-asthmatic. Or maybe sit down a little longer instead of doing the housework.
Also of note – unlike CFC propellants which they replaced, the modern CFC-free propellants are both pharmacologically and anaesthetically active, therefore probably less safe than the former, although little work seems to have been done on this. As well as being seriously more expensive. Strange world we live in.
Thanks for breaking the ice on this one. CO2 is emitted in Gigaton quantities. Could there possibly be a megaton of these propellants emitted every year? I would have a hard time imagining that it is more than a kiloton.
This is just much ado about infinitesimal quantities.
It seems that Brett Montgomery has been infected by the CO2 virus. He needs a bottle of WUWT Tonic which should put him right; so he can get on with the job he is supposed to be doing.
He should also be advised to lay off the media snake oil as research has shown that it has a depletary effect on the logical synapses. However, this can be difficult; as it comes in many guises and can be inserted without your knowledge into many innocent pronouncements.
I wish him well for this is a serious viral pandemic.
I breathe all the way out. There’s a quiet puff of gas from my lighter, then a bubbling sound as I breathe all the way in. I hold my breath for a few seconds and the medicine is where it needs to be: in my lungs.
Many readers who smoke cannabis will recognize this ritual. But I suspect few will connect it with climate change. Until I got enlightened by the “academic rigour” at The Conversation, neither did I.
The article claims that tetraflourethane is “…1,430 times more potent than the best-known warming culprit, carbon dioxide.” The source of this conclusion would be interesting. TFE has two prominent absorption peaks, one at about 1800 wave number and a second at about 1200 wave number but they are very very narrow. How this makes it 1,430 times worse than CO2 is unclear.
They have the multiplier wrong. It is actually 1438.4652974 worse than CO2. They really need to get their facts straight.
Can you please convert that to degrees of CATASTROPHIC WARMING? A good Warmist would do that for us. Probably about 1-2000 C I imagine.
Nor has CO2 been demonstrated to be a global ‘warming’ culprit.
Also, I thought that the “…best known warming culprit…” is water vapor, not carbon dioxide. Perhaps the writer of the article really means that carbon dioxide is the most discussed warming culprit.
I vote for the Sun.
There is little that will make me avoid #FakeNews more quickly than a The Conversation byline.
Narration explanation is the witch doctors tool, but wait, I haven’t finished! Questions will be entertained after the lie is complete and told again.
E. T. Jaynes called it ad-hockery
Just wondering about the contribution of BS. Could it be worse than we thought?
You can’t take down Trump. So now…pick on asthmatics. Great. Just bloody great.
I imagine there are some asthma sufferers who, being upset by the revelation they are increasing their carbon footprint in this way, have such an increased anxiety that they are quickly reaching for their inhalers.
This is outrageous. I used to suffer very badly with asthma and cannot believe that anyone with a sense of decency and morality would complain that a medicine which has transformed the lives of asthmatics could be targeted in such a trivial way. I bridged the period when these little vapour devices first came into use and I can assure you they were absolutely transformative when compared with the almost useless drugs that were in use before.
The fact that some contributors with knowledge about it are suggesting this might be about making people switch to more expensive, but possibly less remedial, inhalers makes the whole thing obscene.
Incidentally, I worry when I see David Middleton threatening to take extra gulps because although I know he is making a point rather than expressing a serious intention, these are powerful drugs and some people do seem to become reliant on taking many doses in one go. Probably not a good thing to increase dependency any more than strictly necessary and illustrative of how awful asthma can be.
A number of years ago, I came to realize that the drug companies are only interested in symptom suppressors, as real cures don’t generate money. Asthma med’s along with lots of other types don’t cure, even though I suspect the knowledge has been available for a while.
“…..the best-known warming culprit, carbon dioxide”. Eye roll, yawn.
Obviously they should stop exhaling immediately!
It’s so pathetic that even ridicule is insufficient for these people.
With Chronic COPD – need both types of inhalers daily. Reduce my carbon footprint?
Thanks a lot Brett, just the same. I’ll give up my inhaler when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Cheers,
Useless Eater
It is all so phony — a non problem– Like a person spitting in the ocean. Shows the illogical mean spirits of the leftist loonies. One international flight of a jet airliner would be worse than all the asthma inhalers in the world.
Obviously nobody informed Bill Clinton because he didn’t inhale!
No doubt this article will be published by the Guardian and BBC then cited in the next IPCC report as evidence of robust peer reviewed research.