Linking nitrous oxide to climate risk is yet another example of the disdain shown to women’s pain | Isabelle Oderberg

When a new report suggested that people who use nitrous oxide when giving birth should be warned about the impacts of climate change, I felt the mild tremor of a collective groan uttered in unison across the country. More than one person sent me headlines accompanied by a rolling eye emoji.

The climate crisis is a pressing matter of life or death and the future of all humanity. The staggering results of our federal election show that this is an issue about which Australians are deeply concerned. And many medical colleges are considering the effects of climate change on their patients, with the Australian Medical Association even issuing a call to arms.

I spend my days examining issues of women’s health and medical care. Given the minuscule effect on the environment that nitrous – also known as laughing gas – has, I feel that this report and its positioning by the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists was seriously misguided.

The are about 300,000 live births a year in Australia. Figures showing nitrous usage were only provided from one hospital in the press release, so we cannot know whether they’re widely indicative. However, they showed that 62% of patients used nitrous during labor. If 62% of births use nitrous, that is 186,000 parents. That sounds like a lot, but is it? Is it enough to make a meaningful difference in climate change?

“While it’s appropriate for the sector as a whole to examine its greenhouse gas emissions and seek ways to get them down, we have to remember that the core of the climate crisis is the burning of coal, oil, and gas for energy,” the Climate Council’s senior researcher for climate solutions, Tim Baxter, told me.

“At the planetary scale, the relative impact of nitrous oxide use in labor wards isn’t irrelevant, but it is very, very small. No individual mother should be made to feel guilty about her choice of pain relief. At an individual scale, parents could do more to protect their child’s health, their wallets, and the climate by doing simple things like getting gas out of their homes.”

A glaring omission is the use of nitrous in dentistry, for which it is much more well-known. Prof Ian Meyers OAM is the president of the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons. He told me nitrous is mostly used to alleviate children’s fear and anxiety but is used more broadly too.

Isabelle Oderberg

So why this report? Why now? Why this issue above all others? Why the omission of other uses? Why did I get all those rolling-eye emoji text messages?

We have known for some time that pain among women is not taken as seriously, even when they have the same procedures as men. One study showed that women with heart bypass surgery were only half as likely as men to be prescribed painkillers after that procedure. They also wait longer to receive analgesia in emergency rooms.

Nitrous oxide is one of the lowest-risk options available to birthing parents who want mild pain relief or are fearful going into birth and need to calm anxiety. It is also very low risk for the babies. Given that it’s used in such small numbers, for short(ish) durations, and has minimal effect on global warming, you wonder why this issue was raised.

It was excruciating. It was like something from the middle ages hysteroscopy patient.

Any parent knows the judgment surrounding giving birth can be overwhelming. Throughout the last decade, parents have been pushed towards “normal” or “natural” childbirth, sometimes with dire consequences.

For those who don’t want an epidural or morphine, the report’s authors suggested transcutaneous electric nerve stimulators (Tens), hypnobirthing, and massage as alternatives to nitrous. The idea that most parents can afford a Tens machine, hypnobirthing classes, or massage is laughable.

I don’t see anyone asking men queuing up from colonoscopies or transurethral resections of the prostate to give a Tens machine or massage a go. They’re knocked out quicker than you can say, “bob’s your uncle”.

While interviewing a patient in Western Australia, it came to my attention that there is a growing movement in Australia to follow a UK trend (which took root mainly as part of NHS cost-cutting measures) to conduct all hysteroscopies with no pain relief at all.

A hysteroscopy examines the inside of the uterus, during which a doctor may remove polyps or fibroid tumors from the uterine wall. The patient I interviewed was told by the public hospital treating her that “85% of patients get through it OK”. What about the other 15%? They don’t make it to the end due to the party.

The patient I spoke with waited seven months to have the procedure. She was told she could have anesthesia but would have to go back on the waiting list for an undefined period to wait for an anesthetist while living with the associated chronic pain caused by her submucosal fibroid. She was convinced to go ahead without anesthetic.

“It was excruciating,” she told me. “It was like something from the middle ages, but by the time they’re doing it, you, just like, let’s just get it over with. It lasted a long time. My body was convulsing with pain. It was horrific.”

In the UK, this trend led to the founding of a campaign group called Campaign Against Painful Hysteroscopy and a petition called “End barbaric NHS hysteroscopies with inadequate pain-relief,” which had attracted almost 57,000 signatures at the time of writing.

I see little to no research or discussion of this or the risks to non-male patients by a system that doesn’t take their pain properly and doesn’t believe them when they present at emergency rooms with life-threatening conditions like heart attacks or pressures them into “natural” births because it’s more convenient and cheaper for the hospital, but not what the parent wants.

While the report may not be “incorrect” in any way, it feels like the lowest-hanging, cheap-as-chips fruit. Context is everything, and in a world where people who aren’t men are fighting for their right to be treated with care, equality, and compassion, the release of this report in this way was deeply ill-advised and made for painful reading.

Bella E. McMahon
I am a freelance writer who started blogging in college. I am fascinated by human nature, politics, culture, technology, and pop culture. In addition to my writing, I enjoy exploring new places, trying out new things, and engaging in conversations with new people. Some of my favorite hobbies are reading, playing music, making crafts, writing, traveling, and spending time with my family.