Hospitals are supposed to be places that make you better - not worse. But many actually are riddled with carcinogens that make you sick.
Well Deirdre Imus, founder of the Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Center, wants them out. So when it was time to construct the new Women and Children's Hospital at Hackensack University Medical Center, Imus and her team got involved.
- Check out our video of Imus' Environmental Health Center and the amazing strides it is making in preventive care.
And that's how we met Kyle Tafuri.
#AlphaRising took a road trip to see the Women and Children's Hospital and Tafuri, a senior sustainability advisor at the hospital who was recently named one of the 30 under 30 to watch in sustainable business by GreenBiz Group, walked us through and showed the super cool safe products they used to build a carcinogen-free environment.
Unfortunately, so many building materials are laden with chemicals that make patients even sicker. What's worse, the incident of employee asthma has risen for hospital workers and nurses because of all the hidden chemicals.
Thanks to Imus' insistence, much of that is gone.
The good news is that while many of these products were hard to get years ago, you can find much of it -- from the paint with zero volatile organic compounds (VOC) to PVC-free hand rails -- at Home Depot (HD) or Lowes (LOW) .
So check out our hospital tour above and think about how you can translate these ideas to your own home.
And for more from Tracy Byrnes and Alpha Rising, watch:
- VZ Wireless Chief Network Officer: The U.S. Needs More Women in Tech to Succeed
- More Girls Need to Be in Tech and Engineering, says VZ Wireless CNO
- Want Financial Equality? Consider Entrepreneurialism, Says Krawcheck
- The Inaugural #AlphaRising Podcast: Jane Newton and Wall Street Women Forum
- Carly Fiorina: We Have a Shortage of Leaders
