WRCA: Water Resources Collections and Archives

San Francisco Bay Fund Inventory of Projects

Health Care Facilities Pollution Assessment Project

Organization: Center for Environmental Health
2000 Grant Recipient

Purpose

To research the sources of hospital-related dioxin and heavy metals deposited in San Francisco Bay and to assist medical facilities in improving the water quality and public health impacts of their operations.

2012 Update

During the course of this project, we were able to raise hospital awareness about waste-reduction and recycling options. Our main message to hospitals shifted to reducing quantities of waste generated, tightening waste segregation methods, and looking at environmentally preferable purchasing policies to eliminate waste at its source. As such, this project helped to build and strengthen participatory relationships between CEH, Health Care Without Harm, and hospitals, and it set the foundation for hospital-community collaboration on reducing toxics in our environment. In fact, several of these relationships continue today, over 10 years later, and have branched into CEH's broader sustainability work with the NorCal Hospitals Group.

Documents