What Does it Mean to Go Green?

Sunrise at Black Rock Forest

Going green is all the rage these days. People are becoming more aware of the environment, and that’s a good thing, but do we really understand what it means to go green?

Summer Sunset  on the Hudson

You may remember the climate-change march that took place in New York City in September, 2014. Hundreds of people marched through the streets to raise awareness about the environment. After the climate-change march, garbage left behind by the participants overflowed trash cans and spilled into the street. This made me think about how wanting to be environmentally friendly and actually helping the earth are two completely different things. Instead of just thinking “the environment is in danger, big companies are messing it up.” I started to think “the environment is in danger, and how can I help save it?”

View at Black Rock Forest

Helping the earth starts with awareness. Most people, like myself, are aware of the negative changes going on in earth’s atmosphere. Let’s use the knowledge we have, instead of denying climate change like the Koch Brothers and Exxon (ExxonMobil) do. Now that I’m aware of the environment, I try to consider how my actions can positively or negatively affect the earth.

Summer Sunrise

Humans have harmed the environment in countless ways. We’ve covered everything with pesticides, cut down forests, spewed greenhouse gases into the environment, filled our oceans with plastic, and polluted areas with nuclear waste. Now the arctic is warming, storms are brewing, and species are going extinct. If this keeps up the earth may become uninhabitable, at least for humans. It’s easy to blame all these problems on big corporations and dismiss them, but I think there are many steps all of us can take to become more green.

.

Shaw Road

I started with becoming more aware of the waste I produce. Plastics don’t biodegrade well, so before I buy something covered in plastic, I question whether or not I really need it. I also started thinking about where the items I buy are coming from. Factories in poor countries where workers are forced to work in horrible conditions, don’t tend to have good environmental policies. When I can I try to buy less, or support eco-friendly companies. The key is not to be greenwashed, that is, tricked into buying products advertised as green that really aren’t.

Fall Sky

There are many other ways to help the environment too, such as using public transportation rather than driving, being energy efficient, buying sustainably produced food, recycling, and composting food waste. Demonstrations like the climate change march can sway world leaders into making better decisions, and that’s a great thing, but it’s not the only way we slow climate change. I found once I got into an environmentally healthy mindset I started to find more and more simple ways I could help the earth. If we all work together to change for the better, change will come. Here’s to saving the earth!

Winter on the Hudson

An Ether Monument?

While wandering the Boston Common last month, I saw a picturesque monument dedicated to ether. I was surprised to see a monument for ether, a colorless liquid that causes unconsciousness and has hypnotic effects. I thought of ether as a popular recreational drug from the 19^th century, hardly something worth a memorializing with a statue.

The momument

It ends up that ether has been around for a while, it was discovered in 1275, and has been used for a few different purposes. The monument also has quite a history.

In the 1840s, a practicing dentist from Boston who never managed to finish medical school experimented with different drugs to use as anesthetics. This man was William Morton and he tried everything - from alcohol to opium- to lessen his patients’ pain. Alcohol was largely ineffective and opium had too many side effects. After seeing his former business partner Horace Wells’ limited success with nitrous oxide as a staple anesthetic, Morton decided to experiment with ether.

First Morton tried topical application of ether, which reduced the pain but didn’t end it completely. Next he experimented with inhalation of a mixture of ether and opium, which also wasn’t ideal. Last of all he tried inhalation of pure ether, and this was the winner. After inhaling ether, the patient went unconscious and felt no pain whatsoever during the operation. Ether is transmitted to the blood stream through the lungs so the effect is almost instantaneous. Ether’s influence tends to only last about half an hour, unlike opium. (One patient of Morton’s didn’t recover from the opium used during her operation for a week!)

Boston Common

After his success with ether, Morton developed a special device for ether inhalation he called a “letheon inhaler.” In 1846 Morton removed Gilbert Abbott’s vascular tumor in his jaw at the Massachusetts General Hospital’s operating theatre. Morton administered ether, and Abbott felt no pain throughout the operation.

People were impressed with the remarkable success of ether and in 1866, Thomas Lee, a retired merchant, suggested that the city of Boston build a monument on the Boston Common dedicated to the first use of ether as an anesthetic in 1846. The city agreed and the monument still stands there to this day.

Me in front of the ether monument

While Morton was adamant that he was the first person to use ether as an anesthetic, this may have not actually been the case. Ether began being used in medical treatment in 1794, and was widely used for recreational purposes in the 1800s. Morton spent most of his life in disputes with medical men about ether use. I would guess that Morton probably wasn’t the first one to use ether as an anesthetic, though he did popularize its use. Thankfully he did! Imagine surgery without anesthesia – it would be extremely painful. While ether isn’t used as an anesthetic anymore, Morton’s work no doubt helped anesthetics become a staple during medical operations, and that is well worth a memorial.