As a guest today we have Dr. Pakhi Chaudhuri. She's a pediatrician, has her own practice, Pediatric Associates of Durango. And she's going to talk to us about some of the green practices that she's implemented, and actually won an award for several years ago at her medical practice. Thanks very much for being here. Thank you. I know that you've done a lot of greening in your business and your medical practice. But sometimes, we kind of leave health care out of this whole sustainability equation, well you say, it's too important the patient outcomes, and so, we really can't pay attention to other issues. So, I believe that sustainability is critical in health care actually, because what I'm trying to link for people and with people is that what we do to the earth, we are actually doing to our own bodies. And we are seeing the ramifications of that with increased cancer rates, increased, kind of weird, neuro-developmental issues. One out of 42 boys now, have autism. 168 kids in general, in United States have autism. A lot of people have a lot of questions as to why is this coming around, are we able to diagnose it better? Et cetera, et cetera. But I'm part of an organization called Physicians for Social Responsibility, and they've put out a fair amount of data that talks about, "Hey, pesticides that we're using on our foods are neurotoxins, and they affect children differently than they affect adults." And if there's been studies at all, they have been mostly on adult mice and not baby mice and not fetuses either. And so, I'm trying to make that link that, again, sustainability isn't like kind of icing on the cake. It might in fact be informing what we're looking at as far as health care problems are going. And so, I think it's intrinsic to kind of health care and it should be. And that's why I included it to kind of be an example of like, I care enough about this to make sure that my practice is green and therefore patient-wise, you know, this is what I care about. So whenever we've done, you know, even my like open house at the very beginning, all the food was organic. And, you know, just all those tiny details that are really important to me because I want my families as much as humanly possible eating organic food, and recognizing that their pediatrician thinks that's important. You know, one of the, there's some interesting things about sustainability. We leave out of the equation a lot of stuff. For instance, inequality. And, we know that malnourishment early on during the developmental stage, and you're a pediatrician so you know lots about this, is detrimental for a person's entire life. And so, as a pediatrician then, it seems like you're at the very hot spot of trying to avoid those sort of lifelong problems. Right. So, yeah. And I, you know, 40% of the practice is on Medicaid. So that means that they are, you know, and then another 10% are on the chip program which is sort of another bridge program. So, we serve a lot of families that are underserved, and also extremely poor. But I find that the families that are really motivated and educated are able to figure out ways in which to do organic food for their family, which is crazy. But we also sponsor the Garden Project where families can, in the summer actually, go and get local produce for free. To make sure that they understand that that's such an important part of being well, as well as free cooking classes that also show them how to stretch their budget. And they might go and buy an entire chicken and learn how to debone it, et cetera, et cetera, so that, you know, if they're going to get an organic chicken it will go the full distance. Yap. Absolutely, yeah. So could you talk about some of the other things you've done in your practice? Yeah. So, you know, the simple things we've done are sort of embarrassing, like using recycled toilet paper and... No, it's not old toilet paper that was recycled, right? Exactly. Okay, good. We want to be real careful how we phrase that. So, we kind of do, we do all the regular stuff, the reusing. When I started the practice, I got, you know, there had been a physician who had just retired. So, I went and got a whole bunch of his equipment and tables and chairs and all kinds of things from him. And we use nontoxic cleaners. We take some time to really look into the products that we're using just for regular stuff wiping down the tables. And we, So we, yeah, so we reuse, we recycle, we do the third 'R' thing which is, something else. Reduce? Reduce, thank you. We reduce. We reduce by using electronic medical recording as well. So that's generally supposed to be a paperless system, it's not quite as paperless as one would hope, but it's obviously a lot less than it used to be with, you know, with regular paper. And so, I think that we again try to have as much of a nontoxic environment as possible, as well as a sustainable environment. But we also do kind of workplace sustainability, and we do a yoga class once a week just for staff. And then for patients, we do infant massage class and a yoga class. And those are all free, not just to our patients but people in the community as well. That's great. Yeah, so it's fun. So, as a doctor, obviously you've taken lots of science classes and whatnot. You talked about cleaning supplies. Are a lot of them toxic or mildly toxic? I mean, are we going to the grocery store and bringing stuff home that probably isn't so safe? Yeah. What's really sad in this country, chemicals are basically innocent until proven guilty. So, you know, I think that most people have the sensation that if they go to Wal-Mart or whatever grocery store, that if you just grab something off the shelf that somebody has checked. That this is, yeah. Yeah. You would think that this was considered a safe product, somebody did some testing on someone somewhere. But that's not the case actually, we don't have any rules around that. And so, basically, something has to go wrong a lot before someone says, "Hey, there's something wrong with this product and we're going to take it off the shelf." So, PCBs, like all these things that have been introduced to our society very quickly and are taking a very long time to come out. You know it took a long time for scientists to prove that they were bad for us. And so, yeah, I mean, basic cleaning products, there's all kinds of weird toxins and all that stuff. And so, we just really are trying to be really careful about making sure that we are using nontoxic products, not just for our patients but for us as staff as well. Yeah, you are around it all the time. Yeah, you are around it all the time. Yeah. I mean, that's why I think hospitals it's really critical, I mean, some hospitals who have decided to green their hospitals, they're being a lot more careful about the phthalates in the I.V. tubing for instance. And, you know, I haven't had a chance to look into the data, but I certainly anecdotally feel like I've seen too many, very healthy, otherwise healthy female providers, nurses, and physicians who have breast cancer, that spend a lot of time in hospitals. And again, I haven't looked at the data, so, I don't know, we might need to edit that out. But, it's concerning to me that, you know, it might be a toxic environment in and of itself, and that's where we send people to get better. I did some work for the EPA, and there are toxic release inventory, and it kind of confirms what you just said. I think there was a number like, there's 4,000 or 5,000 new chemicals synthesized in United States every year. The Toxic Release Inventory, which is the EPA, CDC's best estimate of sort of dangerous materials, covers 800 of them, total... Yeah. Of the 4,000 per year, that are created for decades. And so, we're only behind by about 30 or 40 or 50,000... Right. Chemicals at this point. Right. Yeah. So, babies are now born with over 200 different chemicals in their cord blood. And there's no way that's an okay thing. So, yeah, it's super distressing. And, yeah, and that's why I think it's really important, and has to be part of, absolutely, part of the conversation and not the icing on the cake or when we get to it, it's part of the conversation from the beginning. Needs to be. You know, my view of sustainability evolves a lot when I meet someone like you. And I start to see that there's this whole different perspective on how to have a healthy, safe world. And we talk a lot about climate change, that's kind of the area I work in. But, gosh! There's this huge spectrum out there. And at the end of the day, we're trying to make people's lives better. And if babies are born and the deck is stacked against them from day zero, I mean, it doesn't matter how much carbon there is in the atmosphere in some ways. Yeah. No I, you know, because there's so much controversy around, in certain circles, there's certain, a lot of controversy around if climate change is real or not. And I kind of feel like, I don't even have to go there in order to ask for the changes that I am requesting or pursue the things that I don't care about. I'm wanting clean air, clean water, clean soil. Like, this is what I want for — and there isn't anybody out there that doesn't want those things. And what is sort of interesting, is that if we get clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean food as a result of the clean soil, then you know climate change might be able to be taken care of kind of as a second-hand thing. Because, really, people should be, all people need to be able to, you know, rally for those things. It's funny you mention that because, we talk about intentions sometimes. And I don't think it's anybody's intention to harm children. Right. And yet, our behavior... Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, in my opinion, it's kind of a great equalizer. You know people, rich or poor are getting hit with these neuro-developmental challenges. We have, you know, autism has blinders on in regards to your demographics. And you don't have to be rich or poor or, you know, whatever, the whole thing. And so, it's, yeah, I think it's a great leveller, and if people recognize that these things are sort of linked together on some level that perhaps there might be able to be more change. Yeah. I'm going to kind of dial back to sort of more mundane things. What do you think the best changes you did in your practice? I think that the best change that I made in this process was actually educating my landlord. I lease a space, and we had an energy audit done, and a sustainability audit done, and they made certain recommendations that as a suite within a huge office building, we could not do on our own. And so, I took the information from our energy audit to my landlord directly, and explained to him how I felt like it was important for me in the long run if I wanted to stay in this building, that I want the building to reflect my values. And it seemed to me from things that I could just see very quickly on this energy audit, that there was money on the table for them and that they could very quickly return, you know, have a return on their investment that was not as long as they might be concerned about. So, they did proceed with getting an energy audit. And they somehow came up with spending $500,000 on different things and are noticing that they're already getting a return on their investment. Which is the whole building wasn't just your office. Right. So, it was sort of profound. So they changed out LED lights all over the building, they made retrofits of their heating and cooling system. They did some other things in the parking garage. There was a variety of things that they did that they are able to say has had a profound impact to their bottom line. So, it was very exciting to play that role as educator, and I think that has had the biggest impact on sustainability. That's great. I like that image of money on the table too, because I think for a lot of companies until someone arrives who kind of can look through a sustainability lens, people don't recognize what the opportunities are. Right. And there are opportunities. Right. I think that they initially just feel like, "Oh, I'm going to have to spend money, to do the right thing." And that isn't as appealing to certain people as saving money. But when they dig deeper, they suddenly realize that actually, they'll be saving money in the long run, and it happens to be the right thing to do. Profits are better than costs to you. Yes. Because I think... Absolutely. We're going to wind up, but, this class is for people that are starting careers. They want to do something good for their company organization. Any sort of tips you'd like to give them? Anything that you would do to maybe help them on their way, sort of, insights you've had in doing this journey yourself? I think walking the talk themselves is really important. And so, I think that for me, that means that, you know, I eat really healthy, and whenever I bring something into this office that it is really healthy. And that where we are thinking of the humans as well and the Yoga is an important part of, you know, offering it to my staff is an important piece. So, I think walking the talk themselves. I find that sometimes it gets confusing to me when people in the sustainability world don't look like they are doing sustainable things themselves. And so, I don't know, kind of aligning values with how they live their lives, I think is probably the most important thing. Yeah. You know, I think authenticity is probably really important. Yeah. I think so. I mean, I think that that's the beauty of this actually in the end, is that the sustainability piece pays in dividends on many different levels. And people, I think are craving those things, as craving that authenticity and that purpose. And that they're part of a bigger solution instead of being part of a bigger problem. I think all those things play a role, and people having not just job satisfaction but feeling like they're living their life, again aligned with their values. So, any aspirations for your practice or kind of Pediatric Medicine in terms of this big topic of sustainability? Big topic of sustainability. Well, I still struggle with how to best message around these toxins in the environment. And getting them out of the environment isn't going to be kind of a consumer up, like, just stop buying this junk, you know, instead of trying to go the legislative route. So I still am trying to figure out the best way to address some of those issues. I really wanted to get solar on the roof of this building that we're in and it's probably going to happen not with any of my dollars, but the bigger Colorado is probably going to do that. And so that was one of my aspirations as well. And it looks like it's kind of in working order. So, yeah. So, sort of, on a variety of fronts it seems like things are moving forward. That's great. Yeah. That's just great. Yeah. Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it. Yeah. Sure. Thank you.
