The environmental impact of the Dutch health-care sector beyond climate change: an input-output analysis.

Background: Studies suggest that the Dutch health-care sector is responsible for 4-8% of the national carbon footprint, but the environmental footprint of this sector beyond climate change is not well understood. Therefore, we aimed to estimate the environmental footprint of the Dutch health-care sector for a range of environmental impact categories.

Methods: In this input-output analysis, we used Exiobase (version 3), which contains data on global trade flows and their associated environmental impact, in combination with health-care expenditure data from Statistics Netherlands.