Several years ago, I sat in a waiting room clutching my blue inhaler, blissfully unaware that this small rescue device carried a carbon load heavier than my morning drive to work. The more I dug into the numbers, the more my jaw dropped — one salbutamol inhaler can leave a footprint equivalent to driving over 290 kilometers. That realization sparked my obsession: how can something so life-giving have such an outsize cost, and what can we do about it? Metered Dose Inhalers: A Life-Saver with a Carbon Shadow My first memory of asthma relief is vivid: the reassuring click and cool mist of my blue metered dose inhaler (pMDI). Like millions worldwide, I relied on this small device to breathe easy. What I didn’t realize then was that this life-saver carried a hidden environmental cost. “I had no idea my inhaler emissions could stack up like a year’s worth of road t...