Does biodegradable medical gowns generate hazardous pollutants? Here’s what study says

Since Covid-19 pandemic, the use of disposable plasticized medical gowns both conventional and biodegradable has surged.

It says that as the biodegradable version decomposes faster than conventional gowns, popular wisdom held that it offers a greener option by less space use and chronic emissions in landfills, however, that wisdom may be wrong.

“There’s no magic bullet to this problem,” said Fengqi You, professor in energy systems engineering at Cornell University.

“Plasticized conventional medical gowns take many years to break down and the biodegradable gowns degrade much faster, but they produce gas emissions faster like added methane and carbon dioxide than regular ones in a landfill,” said You, a senior faculty fellow in the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, adding, “Maybe the conventional gowns is not so bad.”

According to the research led by Cornell doctoral student Xiang Zhao, biodegradable gown production poses an additional 11 percent higher ecotoxicity rate than conventional alternatives.

Adopting landfill gas capture and utilization processes in biodegradable gown sanitary landfills can reduce 9.79 percent of greenhouse emissions, life-cycle landfill use by nearly 49 percent, and save at least 10 percent fossil resources by employing onsite power co-generation, the researchers found.

Conventional gowns are environmentally and socially sustainable because they can pose 14 percent less toxicity to humans, cause 10 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and are nearly 10 percent less toxic to freshwater when compared to biodegradable gowns in landfills with extra gas emissions.

Improving the gas capture efficiency above 85 percent can make biodegradable gowns more environmentally sustainable than conventional gowns.

“It’s nice to break down the plastic into smaller things,” Zhao said. “But those small things eventually decompose into gas and if we don’t capture them, they become greenhouse gases that go into the air.”

Funding for this research was provided by the Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR) with funding from the NSF and New York State Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation. 

(With inputs from ANI)

Since Covid-19 pandemic, the use of disposable plasticized medical gowns both conventional and biodegradable has surged.

It says that as the biodegradable version decomposes faster than conventional gowns, popular wisdom held that it offers a greener option by less space use and chronic emissions in landfills, however, that wisdom may be wrong.

“There’s no magic bullet to this problem,” said Fengqi You, professor in energy systems engineering at Cornell University.

“Plasticized conventional medical gowns take many years to break down and the biodegradable gowns degrade much faster, but they produce gas emissions faster like added methane and carbon dioxide than regular ones in a landfill,” said You, a senior faculty fellow in the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, adding, “Maybe the conventional gowns is not so bad.”

According to the research led by Cornell doctoral student Xiang Zhao, biodegradable gown production poses an additional 11 percent higher ecotoxicity rate than conventional alternatives.

Adopting landfill gas capture and utilization processes in biodegradable gown sanitary landfills can reduce 9.79 percent of greenhouse emissions, life-cycle landfill use by nearly 49 percent, and save at least 10 percent fossil resources by employing onsite power co-generation, the researchers found.

Conventional gowns are environmentally and socially sustainable because they can pose 14 percent less toxicity to humans, cause 10 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and are nearly 10 percent less toxic to freshwater when compared to biodegradable gowns in landfills with extra gas emissions.

Improving the gas capture efficiency above 85 percent can make biodegradable gowns more environmentally sustainable than conventional gowns.

“It’s nice to break down the plastic into smaller things,” Zhao said. “But those small things eventually decompose into gas and if we don’t capture them, they become greenhouse gases that go into the air.”

Funding for this research was provided by the Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR) with funding from the NSF and New York State Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation. 

(With inputs from ANI)