Human health is both directly and indirectly related to the environments in which we live. The central purpose in biomedicine is to promote human health, and thus the biomedical field has a strong interest in environmental stewardship. There are at least four aspects of biomedicine that relate to environmental health and stewardship: biomedical research; pharmaceuticals; clinical practice of biomedicine by physicians, nurses, and other trained care providers; and public health and epidemiology. Each of these sectors of biomedicine plays a significant role in environmental impacts and outcomes.

Biomedical research is a broad arena that is carried out in academic health centers and institutes, hospitals and healthcare facilities, community-based research facilities, federal government laboratories, and laboratories of for-profit companies or other types of foundations. Hospitals require ...