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What Plastic is Doing to Your Patients—and You!
Speakers:
Barbara Erny, MDAdjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine
April 21 @ 10:00 pm – April 22 @ 11:30 pm
| Plastic is ubiquitous in US healthcare. Emerging evidence reveals significant health consequences from plastic toxicity and microplastic exposure for both patients and healthcare workers. The healthcare sector generates an alarming volume of plastic waste, contributing substantially to environmental harms that ultimately impact human health. Contrary to common assumptions, studies show that single-use plastics in healthcare are not necessarily safer than reusable alternatives. This session examines the dual crisis of plastic in healthcare: its direct toxic effects on human health, and its indirect health impacts through environmental destruction. Participants will explore the scope of healthcare’s plastic footprint, review current evidence on health harms from plastic exposure—including its role in cardiovascular disease and inflammation, endocrine disruption, and vector-borne infectious disease. Discover practical, evidence-based strategies to reduce plastic use in clinical practice without compromising patient safety or care quality, as well as in daily life. Learning Objectives: Assess the magnitude of plastic use and waste generation in healthcare settings and evaluate how it causes both direct and indirect harms to human healthIdentify the human health risks associated with microplastic exposure, including mechanisms of cardiovascular disease, inflammation, and endocrine disruption in both patients and healthcare workers.Implement evidence-based strategies to reduce plastic consumption in daily life and clinical practice while maintaining patient safety and care quality. |
| Barbara Erny, MD, is a Bay Area native who grew up in Cupertino, when it was in “The Valley of Heart’s Delight.” After earning her BA at Cornell University, she returned to Stanford for both medical school and residency training, then spent over 25 years as a board-certified ophthalmologist at Sutter Health. A longtime PSR member and a familiar face on the SF Bay PSR Environmental Health Committee, Dr. Erny has channeled that commitment into her academic work at Stanford. |
| At Stanford, she is an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine, Faculty Fellow with the Center for Innovation in Global Health, and Affiliate of the Stanford Center for Human and Planetary Health. She is a founding member of Stanford’s Climate Learning Initiative in Medical Education (CLIME), leading efforts to integrate climate and environmental health into medical school curricula and physician training at every level. She extends this work through the Global Consortium on Climate Change Education, serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Climate Change and Health, and has represented ophthalmology on the Steering Committee of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. Dr. Erny is also a co-founder and advisory board member of EyeSustain, a global initiative dedicated to reducing waste in ophthalmology, and serves on the Climate Action Working Group of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. That hands-on work confronting waste and harmful materials in her own specialty has sharpened her focus on a problem facing all of medicine: the profound and under-recognized harms of plastics in healthcare — the subject of her talk. |