We are pleased to announce that BELL EQUINE has become the first equine veterinary practice in the world to install the SageTech Veterinary filter system that captures waste volatile anaesthetic agents that are released during gaseous general anaesthesia.
Like most equine veterinary hospitals, horses requiring surgery under general anaesthesia are kept “asleep” using volatile anaesthetic agents (predominantly isoflurane) mixed with oxygen. When the horse breathes out, these gases are expelled into the atmosphere. Although isoflurane is one of the safest anaesthetic agents available for the horse, it is highly damaging to the atmosphere, and is regarded as a very potent greenhouse gas that has a long atmospheric lifetime, meaning that it can impact the climate for many years, and contributes to global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere.
The SageTech Veterinary filter system removes isoflurane from the exhaled gases before they are vented into the atmosphere, thereby massively reducing the damaging effects that they have; eventually, the isoflurane that has been saved in the filter will be able to be reused as an anaesthetic agent.
This development is just one of a number of ways that we are striving to reduce the carbon footprint of our work.
