The environmental footprint of health care: a global assessment

Background: Health-care services are necessary for sustaining and improving human wellbeing, yet they have an environmental footprint that contributes to environment-related threats to human health. Previous studies have quantified the carbon emissions resulting from health care at a global level. We aimed to provide a global assessment of the wide-ranging environmental impacts of this sector.

Lenzen, M., Malik, A., Li, M., Fry, J., Weisz, H., Pichler, P., . . . Pencheon, D. (2020). The environmental footprint of health care: A global assessment. The Lancet Planetary Health, 4(7). doi:10.1016/s2542-5196(20)30121-2